When an urgent care buys outside coverage, the price has three parts: what the clinician is paid, what the staffing source keeps, and what you're billed.
Sources present those parts differently. An agency may quote one bill rate. A marketplace may show the clinician's rate and add its fee on top. You can't compare two quotes until they're in the same form.
This guide explains how a staffing fee is built and what makes it change from shift to shift. The contract terms around the rate, such as cancellation, extensions, conversion fees and exclusivity, are in what to read in an urgent care staffing agency contract. This is general information and not legal or financial advice, and your attorney should read any agreement before you sign it.
Bill Rate, Pay Rate and the Staffing Fee
- Pay rate: the hourly amount the clinician is paid.
- Bill rate: the hourly amount you're charged.
- Fee: the difference between the two. Sources also call it a markup, a margin or a commission.
The staffing source pays its own costs out of the fee and keeps what's left. Those costs include recruiting clinicians, collecting and checking their documents, and running payroll. In some arrangements they also include malpractice coverage and employer payroll taxes.
What the fee includes differs by source, so its size doesn't tell you whether it's a good price. A smaller fee that leaves malpractice coverage for you to arrange can cost you more in total.
Three Ways a Staffing Fee Is Set
A percentage of the pay rate. The fee rises and falls with what the clinician is paid. If a holiday shift pays the clinician more, the fee in dollars is larger too, though the source did the same work to fill it.
A flat amount per hour. The fee is the same whatever the clinician is paid. When you raise the rate to fill a hard shift, the whole increase goes to the clinician.
One bill rate with nothing broken out. You see a single number. The fee is whatever remains after the source pays the clinician, and it can differ between two clinicians billed at the same rate.
Each of these is a legitimate way to charge. They give different results when the shift changes, so ask how the fee responds to a change before you agree to it.
What Makes a Staffing Fee Change
Ask each source these questions and keep the answers in writing.
- Is the fee calculated on the clinician's base rate only, or on everything billed? Everything billed can include premium pay for holidays or short notice, and pass-through costs such as travel.
- Does the fee differ by role, by shift length or by how late the shift was booked?
- Is the fee the same for a clinician you've booked before? The recruiting work was done the first time.
- Is the fee fixed for a term? If it can change, how much notice do you get?
- Which charges sit outside the hourly rate? Ask about setup fees, cancellation charges and late-payment charges.
What the Staffing Fee Covers
Ask for a written list of what the fee includes. It should answer each of these.
- Who recruits the clinician
- Who collects and checks licenses and documents, and which checks are run
- Who screens the clinician against federal exclusion lists, and how often
- Who carries malpractice coverage for the shift
- Who pays the clinician and handles their tax forms
- Whether the source looks for a replacement if the clinician cancels
Anything the fee doesn't cover is work or cost that stays with your clinic. Add it to that source's price before you compare. Your clinic also still reviews each clinician against its own written criteria, which the urgent care locum credentialing guide covers.
Put Two Staffing Quotes in the Same Form
Use one real shift for the comparison: the same role, date and hours for every source.
- Write down everything that source would put on the invoice for that shift.
- Add the cost of anything that source leaves to you, such as coverage you'd arrange yourself.
- Divide the total by the shift's hours. The result is your all-in cost per covered hour.
- Next to it, write the clinician's pay rate, if the source tells you.
The pay rate belongs in the comparison because two sources with the same total can pay the clinician different amounts. Clinicians choose shifts partly on pay. A source that keeps more and pays less may get fewer clinicians willing to take your shift.
If a source won't tell you the pay rate, you can still compare totals. You can't see how the total is split.
Where a Lower Bill Rate Costs More
With a single bill rate, a source can agree to a lower number and recover it by paying the clinician less. Your invoice goes down, and so does the pay offered for your shift. Ask where a reduction comes from. When the fee is stated separately from the pay rate, you can see the answer.
A higher fee is worth paying when the source does work you'd otherwise do yourself. A recruiter who searches for a hard-to-fill role, or arranges travel and housing for an assignment that runs for weeks, is doing that work. For a single shift that a nearby clinician can pick up, you may not need it.
How Rediworks Charges Urgent Care Clinics
Rediworks is a self-service marketplace and not a recruiter-led agency. You post a shift with its rate, and clinicians see the rate before they apply. Rediworks charges the clinic a commission on top of the clinician's rate.
The cost of a Rediworks shift to your clinic is the clinician's rate plus that commission. Put it in the same comparison as every other source, using the steps above.
Signup is self-service, with no sales call. Sign up to post shifts.