A Holistic Approach

Floyd Lee Locums’ supportive and caring relationships yield quality health outcomes

When healthcare practitioners feel seen, supported and respected, they can focus on what is most important: providing patients with top-notch care. The fact that Floyd Lee Locums has been named a Best Staffing Firm to Temp For three years running speaks volumes of the supportive and caring relationship between the providers and their recruiters — whom they call “concierge healthcare consultants” — and the resulting care those providers give.

Founded in 2017, Charleston, South Carolina-headquartered Floyd Lee Locums employs approximately 55 internal employees who, depending on projects and needs, support anywhere from 50 to 200 healthcare providers on assignment per week.

Rising to the Challenges

Like every organization, Floyd Lee Locums was forced to pivot at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Today, Natasha Lee, co-founder and CEO, credits this time for instilling the company with the agility and versatility it has today.

“By the end of 2020, we were pretty optimistic about our ability to navigate through all the different challenges and disruptions,” she says.

In 2021, Floyd Lee Locums leaned into that adaptability: As the US and allies withdrew forces in Afghanistan, evacuees in need of medical care were arriving to field hospitals set up on the east coast. Floyd Lee Locums placed approximately 100 doctors in the span of four weeks, sending them into challenging conditions where they delivered expert medical care to Afghan evacuees.

While Lee is looking forward to a bit of normalcy in the near term, she is grateful for the hurdles the company has overcome so far, which pushed “us as a team to evolve — and tested what we were all about,” she says. “I’m proud of what our company was able to accomplish.”

More Than a Transaction

Another such accomplishment has been ensuring its healthcare providers feel valued.

To that end: It is a priority that internal staff’s collaboration with locums healthcare partners comes across as much more than a business transaction, Chief Operating Officer (COO) Nicole Burleson says. Whether it is the first conversation with a provider, their first job placement or beyond into multiple roles in the locums lifestyle, the internal staff at Floyd Lee Locums focuses on understanding and connecting with the provider to ensure they feel supported within the organization and are well-matched to their assignments.

“Our internal team of concierge healthcare consultants are very focused on making sure that we’re meeting physicians’ needs. This is not about just filling a job we have. It’s about making sure we have the right fit for them so we can keep them long term,” Burleson says.

As evidenced by Floyd Lee Locum’s repeated Best Staffing Firm to Temp For wins, the locum healthcare providers feel and appreciate this partnership. Dr. Aldred Williams, a dentist, has been with Floyd Lee Locums for four years now. Drawn originally to the generous compensation, he has stayed for the acknowledgement and appreciation he has received from the company.

“Floyd Lee Locums displays a proper mix of professionalism, levity and enthusiasm, serving to create an atmosphere of warmth between itself and its clients,” Williams says. He reflects on a time when he mentioned his 50^th wedding anniversary in passing to an internal staff member. “She knew all about it and let it slip that I would be receiving a special gift for that milestone. What staffing agency does that?”

At the end of the day, Floyd Lee Locums recognizes and prioritizes the fact that providers and internal team members are more than just their career. The company encourages mental health breaks, supports family time and flexible remote work, and offers paid volunteer hours for employees to give back to their communities. “And we celebrate that. We take pictures, we share that amongst the organization, so people understand we want you to take your time off and enjoy your PTO and your vacations with your family,” Burleson says. In other words, the organization cares for workers’ “holistic selves,” which benefits the providers and, ultimately, the hospitals and patients they serve.

Operating With Transparency

For Williams, one of the standout traits of Floyd Lee Locums is its transparency with its locums providers. Since joining the company, Williams has worked in five different state prisons — unique environments with vast differences from other treatment venues. Not only are Floyd Lee Locums recruiters highly knowledgeable about these differences, they “elucidate those requirements to potential recruits, which enables the recruit to make informed decisions, and it sifts out the candidates most conducive to prospering and being retained,” Williams explains.

Dr. Edmond Nelson, a hospitalist, echoes these sentiments. Having worked as a locum tenens provider for about seven years, Nelson noticed Floyd Lee Locums’ transparency when he began with the company in 2021.

There are certain things that locum physicians would like to know, Nelson explains. “I want to know the location, I want to know the census, I want to know what rate I am being paid.” While he’d have to dig for information with other staffing firms, “with Floyd Lee Locums, that information was given to me upfront so that I could make an informed decision on whether I would like to pick up this job site or not.”

That’s part of Floyd Lee Locums’ “concierge-style” approach to placement services, through which the firm connects providers with positions and opportunities they will find fulfilling and enjoyable. Floyd Lee Locums is in a position to help physicians navigate their career in medicine — a “big ask” that gives staff a sense of purpose and excitement. “We feel like our work matters, and because of that, we have a really incredibly strong commitment internally to getting it right,” Lee says.

Helping Providers Do What They Do Best

Floyd Lee Locums recognizes that the more they can take off a locum provider’s plate, the more that provider can focus on what they have been trained to do. The internal team becomes “their people,” as Lee describes it, supporting them through the challenges and logistics of the locums space. This type of hands-on assistance does not go unnoticed by providers.

“If there is a glitch, they are very quick to take care of things — and it makes my life a lot easier, so I can focus on what I need to focus on,” Nelson says. He recounts a time when a delayed connecting flight left him stranded overnight and in danger of missing his first shift on his new assignment. His recruiter dropped her Sunday night dinner plans to help him find a new route. “On a Sunday, she was not eating dinner with her family,” he says of the two to three hours his recruiter devoted to him that night. “On a Sunday. I really appreciated her doing that. She did not send me over to the travel agents. She helped me herself.”

Those impactful interactions have made Floyd Lee Locums the staffing firm of choice for Williams and Nelson. “I’ve been so very impressed that I’ve started working really exclusively with them,” Nelson states.

With a culture that values personal relationships, flexibility, creative problem-solving, work-life balance and a passion for making a positive impact, Floyd Lee Locums has set a high bar for itself and the locums industry. But it’s a bar Lee is committed to continually raising. “We’ve got a great foundation we’ve laid these first five years, and that’s the part I think we’ve been most excited about. I expect to continue to grow and expand, to be a player that people look to and respect,” Lee says in relation to the company’s reputation as a Best Staffing Firm to Temp For. “This is definitely a part of our strategy as it relates to engagement and how we continue to show up in the future.”