The Challenge

Since its inception, Echo Locum Tenens has been on a fast track. With more than 900 active physicians, 27 recruiters, 19 staffing coordinators, four travel coordinators, and four administrators, the organization has grown its workforce by 82% since its inception in 2011.

"With our high projected annual growth, we needed to find a web-based outsourced solution that would support our growth while maintaining accurate and quality compensation services for all of our 1099 providers,” explains Carrie Matlock, Lead Staff Accountant for Echo Locum Tenens. 

“However, with current processes based on Excel spreadsheets, work records submitted through DocuSign, and the ability to only upload gross pay through a large national solutions provider, our processes had many limits and could not keep up with any future growth.”

To meet Echo Locum Tenens’ key objectives, the compensation solution had to offer a mobile time-keeping source with multiple site options as well as tracking and reporting options by date, site, or provider, eliminate time-consuming manual tasks, and enable processing using multiple pay rates and sites per provider.

The Solution

The search for an adequate provider compensation solution began in January 2013. After meeting with various vendors, Echo Locum Tenens selected PayNW’s cloud-based Timekeeping solution. 

“What attracted us to PayNW was the ability to easily adapt the solution to our very specific needs, including multiple types of access and very specific reporting for each access type,” adds Matlock. “It enabled us to eliminate many manual steps, in particular the more time-consuming task of managing time or work records. We also needed better reporting abilities for our providers with regard to their bi-weekly earnings statements which was a very frustrating issue for most of our 1099 providers.”

Echo Locum Tenens began implementing Timekeeping in June 2013. They then trained their recruiters and staffing coordinators on the time-keeping product, mobile application, and approval process. The final two weeks of the implementation, the recruiters contacted their providers and demonstrated the application in both web and mobile versions. Today, PayNW’s Timekeeping system serves the needs of 900 users daily, including providers, recruiters, staffing coordinators, travel coordinators, and administrators.

Now Echo Locum Tenens enjoys a wide range of reporting capabilities, detailed earnings statements, and very user-friendly access to timekeeping via smart phone applications. Providers really like the full detail on their earnings statements which Echo Locum Tenens’ previous processing company was unable to deliver. With direct access to track their billable time, each provider conveniently logs in and out using their tablet throughout their working day. On their side, Echo Locum Tenens tracks the different shifts providers are working. Once the tracking of time costing is approved for the pay period, Timekeeping 
generates easy and accurate payments to each provider.

Business Results

After a smooth implementation over the span of six weeks, Echo Locum Tenens  immediately saw the first benefits of PayNW’s solution, including:

• Significant administrative cost savings (28% in year 1 and 35% in year 2) compared to their previous solution provider
• Increased productivity

“Timekeeping is the best fit I have seen for our numerous pay rates and exceptions that are not a part of a normal process,” concludes Matlock. “We are now able to continue on our planned growth trajectory while ensuring high provider and customer satisfaction by delivering superior service. We would highly recommend PayNW to any other healthcare organizations seeking to streamline their processes to compensate providers with versatile, cost-effective solutions.”