Checklist: Documents every locum should keep up to date

Agencies gain trust not by talking about their value — but by showing it. Practises want proof: proof of reliability, proof of cost-efficiency, proof of how your service reduces cancellations and protects their rota.

Data charts showing agency performance — Clear metrics immediately communicate stability, coverage, and reliability.

1. Start with the three “core value metrics”

These metrics are universal. They work whether you're a niche pharmacy agency, a GP specialist, or a multi-discipline supplier.

Fill rate How often you fill requested shifts

Time-to-fill How quickly you secure cover

Cancellation rate How often shifts fall through

These alone demonstrate your reliability. If you deliver above 85% fill rate and low cancellation numbers, clients immediately see stability.

2. Show trends, not snapshots

A single month of good performance isn't persuasive. A six-month trend is. Trends tell a story of consistency — and consistency is what practices buy.

Trend lines showing staffing improvements — Trend lines make patterns obvious — improvement, stability, or risk.

Examples of trend-based metrics

Month-by-month fill rate
Seasonal demand behaviour
Most-requested clinicians
Peak booking days vs. low-risk days

Trends let you influence client behaviour: “We recommend pre-booking Thursdays because your demand spikes every month.”

3. Use data to protect your fees

When clients understand the measurable work behind your service — responsiveness, compliance checking, crisis cover, and reduced admin — fee negotiations become smoother.

Data that strengthens fee conversations

Average time saved per week for the practice
Compliance pass rates of your clinicians
% of shifts filled in < 2 hours (instant impact metric)
Number of cancelled clinics prevented

Power Line:

“Over the last 90 days, our team prevented 14 clinic cancellations and filled 83% of requests within 60 minutes.”

4. Give clients a simple monthly snapshot

Most practice managers don’t want complicated dashboards — they want a clear one-page view they can understand at a glance.

Monthly snapshot report — A clean monthly snapshot builds trust and positions you as a strategic partner.

A powerful one-page report includes:

Your fill rate
Upcoming risk areas
Clinician availability signals
Seasonal trend alert
Cost-saving insights

Final thoughts

Agencies who report data simply outperform those who don’t. Data transforms you into more than a supplier — you become an operational partner who improves the client’s workflow and reduces stress.

And once clients rely on your reporting, they rarely leave.

Every practice expects the occasional unavoidable cancellation. Illness, emergencies and family issues will always exist. But when cancellations become a weekly pattern, the rota starts to feel fragile—and the whole practice feels it.

This guide focuses on what you can directly control as a practice or PCN manager: structures, communication, and booking practices that dramatically reduce last-minute cancellations.

Busy waiting room due to last-minute cancellations — Cancellations don’t just affect the rota—they ripple into patient access, staff stress and clinic reputation.

1. Find out why cancellations are really happening

Before fixing cancellations, you need to understand their patterns. Are they mostly:

Locums cancelling?
Permanent staff sickness?
Miscommunication about rota changes?
Clinics booked without confirmed clinicians?

Look back over the last 4–8 weeks and list each cancellation with a simple tag: staffing, illness, miscommunication, double-booking, or other. You’ll nearly always see a pattern.

5-minute cancellation log

What clinic? (e.g. AM duty, LTC, vaccinaton)
Who cancelled? (locum, salaried, ANP)
When did you find out?
Reason given?
Was there a clear backup plan?

2. Protect critical clinics first

Not all cancellations are equal. Some sessions can be absorbed with phone triage or rebooking; others cause immediate safety and access issues. Your first step is to ring-fence the most critical clinics.

High-risk sessions typically include:

Morning acute / duty clinics
Same-day access or on-the-day triage
Child or frailty reviews
Vaccination and immunisation clinics

These sessions should either:

Be staffed by your most reliable permanent clinicians, or
Have pre-booked and trusted locums assigned well in advance.

Highlighted critical sessions on a rota — Flagging “critical” clinics on the rota helps everyone see where cancellations are simply not an option.

3. Shift from reactive to proactive locum booking

Many practices only reach out to locums when a problem appears. That almost guarantees last-minute cancellations because:

Locums are already committed elsewhere
Details are rushed and prone to misunderstanding
There’s no time for proper onboarding or orientation

Proactive booking habits

Pre-book high-risk clinics 4–6 weeks in advance
Offer recurring sessions to your most reliable locums
Reserve a small number of “buffer” locum sessions in busy periods
Keep a shortlist of preferred clinicians who know your systems

Locums are far less likely to cancel when they have clear, recurring sessions with a practice they know and trust.

4. Reduce cancellations caused by miscommunication

A surprising number of cancellations stem from simple confusion: unclear session times, wrong location, misaligned expectations about workload or IT systems.

Standardise your booking confirmation

Every confirmed session—whether via platform, email or phone—should include:

Exact times (including admin time before/after)
Site/location (especially for PCNs or multi-site practices)
Session type and typical appointment length
Expected admin / results / prescriptions load
Named contact on arrival

Structured confirmation email example — A clear, structured confirmation reduces “I didn't realise…” cancellations.

5. Build a small resilience buffer into the rota

If your rota is always operating at maximum capacity, any absence becomes a crisis. A small resilience buffer absorbs the shock.

Examples of buffer design

One flexible clinician session each week (can switch roles)
A pre-booked locum session in your highest-risk day of the week
Protected admin blocks that can be converted to clinical time in emergencies

Impact example

“After adding a single buffer session on our busiest day, we reduced same-day cancellations affecting patients by over 40%.”

6. Tighten how you handle repeat cancellers

Patterns matter. If certain clinicians (locum or permanent) repeatedly cancel at short notice, that is a rota risk that needs active management.

Steps you can take

Track individual cancellation history over 3–6 months
Reduce priority for clinicians with frequent last-minute cancellations
Offer more stable, recurring patterns to reliable clinicians
Have a transparent, fair policy on cancellation notice periods

7. Use your data to change behaviour

Once you track cancellations properly, you can start using your own data to make better decisions:

Which days are most fragile?
Which clinics are most often affected?
Are cancellations clustered around school holidays or specific months?
Which locums and staff are consistently reliable?

Sharing this data with your team and your locums creates shared ownership of the rota. People are more likely to support the system when they see its impact clearly.

Final thoughts

You cannot eliminate every cancellation. But you can significantly reduce last-minute disruption by protecting critical clinics, pre-booking locums proactively, improving confirmation details and building a small buffer into the rota.

When cancellations become the exception rather than the norm, your practice feels calmer, patients experience fewer disruptions, and your rota finally feels like a tool—not a daily battle.

Using Data to Demonstrate Value to Your Clients

1. Start with the three “core value metrics”