Building LocumizeA Direct-Connection Marketplacefor Physician Staffing
How we replaced agency dependency with a full-lifecycle locum tenens platform, from job posting to final payment.
Facilities and physicians coordinate credentialing, contracts, timesheets, and escrow-backed payouts on one platform, without the agency markup or information asymmetry.
Client
Locumize
Built by
Appic Softwares
Category
Physician Staffing Marketplace
Stack
Next.js · React · PostgreSQL · Stripe · Zoom · Mochi Health
The Problem Wasn't Shortage. It Was Structure.
There are enough physicians in the United States to fill locum tenens shifts.
That's not the crisis.
The crisis is the layer of machinery sitting between a physician and a facility, and the cost of running it.
A hospital in a rural county needs a surgeon for three weeks. They call an agency. The agency charges 30 to 40 percent on top of what the physician actually earns. Nobody negotiates directly. Nobody sees the full picture. The facility doesn't know what the physician was told. The physician doesn't know what the facility agreed to pay.
Both sides are operating through a middleman who controls the information and keeps the spread.
This isn't just expensive. It distorts decisions. Facilities don't hire based on best fit: they hire based on what the agency presents. Physicians don't choose assignments based on what works for them: they take what they're offered, with terms they didn't negotiate.
For a market that moves on trust, where a facility is handing patient care to someone they've barely vetted, that structure creates real risk.
Why Existing Tools Don't Fix It
The obvious answer seems like job boards. Post the shift, let physicians apply. But that misses the actual complexity.
A job board handles discovery. It doesn't handle what comes after: credentialing, contract terms, timesheet submission, payment release. If you list a shift and expect two parties to figure out the rest, you haven't replaced the agency; you've just moved the chaos somewhere else.
Traditional job platforms are transactional. Healthcare staffing is a process.
A physician joining a facility requires license verification, state-specific credentialing, malpractice history review, and a DEA registration check, all before they can legally work a single shift. None of that lives on a job board.
The agency, for all its inefficiency, does serve a function: it holds the workflow together. The problem isn't that agencies exist. It's that they hold that workflow hostage.
What the market needed wasn't a posting board. It needed a platform that could carry the entire assignment lifecycle from discovery through payment, without requiring an agency in the loop.
What We Built
Locumize is a direct-connection healthcare staffing marketplace for licensed medical doctors and the facilities that need them.
Facilities post positions. Physicians discover and apply. The two parties negotiate, communicate, and execute assignments entirely on-platform. Credentialing is managed in-system. Timesheets are submitted and approved through the platform. Payments are held in escrow and released upon facility approval.
No agency. No markup. No black box.
The platform runs three distinct portals (Facility, Physician, and Admin), each built around the actual workflows of that role, not a one-size-fits-all dashboard.
System Architecture
How We Thought About the System
Building a staffing marketplace isn't a UI problem. It requires thinking in terms of coordinated systems: each one doing a specific job, all of them working in sequence.
01. Marketplace Layer
Job posting and discovery
Built for two very different users simultaneously
Facilities needed to describe complex assignments (shift type, specialty, compensation structure, EMR system, trauma level, credentialing requirements) in enough detail that physicians could self-select before applying. Generic job forms don't work here.
Physicians needed filtered discovery. A hospitalist in Chicago looking for two weeks of coastal coverage doesn't want to scroll through irrelevant listings. Filters for specialty, location, pay range, start date, and shift type are the minimum, but the system also needed to surface engagement signals so physicians could prioritize where to spend their attention.
The marketplace layer sounds simple. Getting it right for two users with fundamentally different contexts required deliberate structure.
02. Workflow Layer
The spine of the platform
From "Apply" to payment cleared: every step explicit
This is where most platforms either nail it or fall apart.
We mapped every transition explicitly:
Each step has a different actor, a different permission level, and a different consequence if it stalls. No ambiguity about who acts next. No dead ends where a pending step just sits.
03. Credentialing
The part most platforms skip
The part that actually breaks things
After a physician accepts an offer, before they can cover a single shift, a full documentation checklist must be collected, reviewed, and verified:
- State medical license
- DEA registration
- BLS / ACLS certifications
- Malpractice history
- NPI verification
- CAQH credentialing profile
Verification runs through Mochi Health's credentialing infrastructure. The data isn't just collected; it's checked against actual medical databases.
Skipping this would have made Locumize a job board. It's what makes it a staffing platform.
04. Escrow and Payments
Funds committed before the shift
Released after approval. No surprises.
Physicians working locum tenens shifts through traditional agencies deal with delayed, opaque, sometimes disputed payments. Timing and amount are both controlled by the agency.
We integrated Stripe-based escrow so that payment terms are locked at the point of offer, funds are secured before the shift begins, and release is triggered by facility approval of the submitted timesheet. Physicians know exactly when they'll be paid and for how much.
Facilities have a 48-hour target and a 72-hour hard limit to approve. The system sends reminders. Disputes escalate to platform support.
It's not a perfect system. But it's a transparent one, and that's what was missing.
05. Admin Control
Operational oversight
Not just moderation: full platform visibility
The admin panel exists for a reason that goes beyond flagging bad listings: healthcare staffing is regulated. Physician credentials expire. Postings need to meet compliance standards. Payment disputes need someone with full visibility across both sides.
Roles are permission-based. Notification rules are configurable. The reporting layer tracks fulfillment ratios, credentialing turnaround times, and revenue: the metrics that matter for running the platform, not just using it.
Real Flows
How It Works in Practice
Three users. Three portals. Each flow built around what that user actually does, not a shared interface adapted for everyone.
- 1Register and set up facility profileContact persons, billing details, default shift templates
- 2Post a positionSpecialty, shift type, compensation, EMR system, credentialing requirements
- 3Receive and review physician applicationsView profiles, credentials, availability, all in one place
- 4Schedule a video interview via ZoomLogged on-platform, attached to the application record
- 5Extend an offerRate, start date, and shift details; physician accepts or requests revisions
- 6Track credentialing status in real timeSee exactly what's verified, pending, or missing
- 7Receive submitted timesheet after shiftsHours, rate type, shift notes, structured and ready to review
- 8Approve and release paymentFunds held in escrow are released via Stripe upon approval
Product Thinking
Key Decisions
Every non-obvious choice in the platform had a reason behind it. These four shaped the product most.
Why escrow, not direct payment?
In a two-sided marketplace where trust is still being established, direct payment creates too many failure modes: late payment, short payment, or funds released before the shift is completed.
Escrow removes the uncertainty. Funds are committed before the shift starts. Release is triggered by an explicit approval action. Both sides are protected, and the incentive to approve on time is built into the system.
Why three portals instead of one dashboard?
A physician and a facility administrator have almost nothing in common in how they use this platform.
A single interface would mean either cluttering the physician experience with facility controls, or stripping the facility dashboard of tools it actually needs. Three separate portals, each designed around its user's actual workflow, were the only choice that made sense.
Why embed interviews instead of just linking to Zoom?
Integrating Zoom via API keeps the entire pre-hire process on-platform. The interview is logged. The outcome is attached to the application. There's a record.
If there's ever a dispute about what was agreed in an interview, there's context. That's an operational decision as much as a product one.
Why make credentialing a first-class feature?
Credentialing is what agencies sell as their value-add. But at its core, it's a collection of verified documents in a database, something a well-built platform can handle.
Bringing it in-platform eliminates the last real reason to use an agency. A physician whose credentials are already stored and verified on Locumize has less reason to leave.
Outcomes
What Changed
For Facilities
Meaningful reductions in locum staffing costs, mostly from eliminating agency markup. Time-to-fill improves because discovery, application, and credentialing happen in parallel, on the same platform, with direct communication.
For Physicians
Higher effective earnings on the same shifts. More importantly, actual control over which assignments they take, what terms they accept, and when they get paid.
Both sides now have something they didn’t have before: visibility into their own deal, in real time, without waiting on a third party for an update.
In Summary
Healthcare staffing is a coordination problem dressed up as a market problem.
The solution isn't more listings. It's removing the friction and opacity that make direct relationships between facilities and physicians feel impossible in the first place.
Locumize is infrastructure for that direct relationship. Not a job board. Not a scheduling tool. A platform that handles the full arc of a locum assignment from posting to payment, because that's what both sides actually need.
Building it required understanding the workflows, the regulatory requirements, the payment mechanics, and the trust dynamics between two parties who've historically never talked to each other directly.
The platform works when nobody has to think about how it works.
Questions About Building Healthcare Marketplaces
Credentialing, escrow, multi-portal workflows: common questions from teams exploring platforms like Locumize.
Why use escrow instead of direct facility-to-physician payments?
Escrow locks terms at the offer, secures funds before the shift, and releases payout only after structured timesheet approval. It reduces dispute risk and aligns incentives for timely approval, something ad-hoc invoices rarely achieve in two-sided healthcare staffing.
How do you handle medical credentialing without an agency?
Locumize treats credentialing as a first-class workflow: document collection, verification, and status tracking on-platform, integrated with Mochi Health for database-backed checks. That turns credentialing from a black box into an operational pipeline both sides can see.
Why build separate Facility, Physician, and Admin experiences?
The actions, permissions, and mental models are different for each role. Separate portals avoid compromising either the clinical hire flow or the facility operations tooling, and keep compliance-sensitive controls where they belong.
Why integrate Zoom instead of sending users off-platform?
API-driven scheduling and logging keeps interviews attached to the application record. That auditability matters for operational disputes and for maintaining a single source of truth across the hiring workflow.
What technologies power a marketplace like Locumize?
Locumize was built with Next.js and React on the frontend, PostgreSQL for durable relational data, Stripe for escrow and payouts, Zoom for embedded interviews, and Mochi Health for credentialing verification, coordinated into explicit workflow states end to end.
Ready to Build a Two-Sided Marketplace That Survives Real-World Compliance?
Locumize shows how discovery, credentialing, interviews, and escrow-backed payouts can live in one coherent system, so facilities and physicians can transact without an agency-shaped hole in the middle.
- ✓Full-lifecycle workflows, not a job board bolt-on
- ✓Multi-portal UX for admins, facilities, and clinicians
- ✓Payments and verification designed for disputed, regulated hiring
- ✓Next.js, PostgreSQL, Stripe, and integrations done in production contexts
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