Several years ago, Rob Scott, MD, CEO of Phoenix Physicians, found the process of hiring doctors for temporary service was cumbersome and inefficient. So, with the help of a tech-savvy partner, he created Durham-based Lucidity to address the problem.
It wasn’t the Scott family’s first venture in the entrepreneurial realm, notes Lucidity CEO James Clarke, JD. Steven Scott, MD, chair of Lucidity Direct, founded Vista HealthPlan, a national HMO with $1.2 billion in revenues that sold to Coventry Heath Care in 2007 as well as Phoenix Physicians.
“Scott had to deal with staffing emergency rooms,” said Clarke, “and his feeling was that the system was inefficient with lots of middlemen and recruiters hounding doctors. He felt there had to be a better way, a technology solution.”
He teamed with experienced tech entrepreneur Rajeev Dharmapurikar to cofound Lucidity in 2015. Prior to cofounding and launching Lucidity, Rajeev cofounded Advisestream, a pre-health advising solution, which was acquired by Kaplan Inc. in 2014. His other startups include Instream Solutions and Vigilantmonitor.
Rajeev Dharmapurikar, co-founder of Lucidity.
The Scott family backed Lucidity to the tune of about $3.9 million so far. Clarke said that while the company has been approached by other potential investors, it is not actively seeking them currently.
It has developed a platform to make what the industry calls “locum tenens,” the Latin phrase that means “to hold a place,” or “substitute for,” used to refer to physicians hired on a temporary basis, much more efficient for both purchasers and the physicians.
The company went live in 2016 and has 7 U.S. employees and 14 in India. It operates nationally with a significant number of doctors signed up in North Carolina. The top three states using its services are California, Texas, and Florida. Midwestern states such as Ohio and Indiana also have a high demand for locum tenens, he said.
Clarke pointed out that many doctors who work locums tenens have licenses in multiple states. “One of the attractions of locums is for younger doctors, unmarried, who don’t want permanent positions yet. “They have a lot of flexibility about where they’re willing to work.”
Four medical practices use the most locum tenens services, behaviorial health, emergency rooms, hospital medicine and family practices, with the first two the largest segments. Emergency rooms and other practices can’t go unstaffed if the regular doctors go on vacation or ill, Clarke said.
The Lucidity system creates transparency for both the doctors and the practices and lets them negotiate with each other directly. It also handles many back-office functions such as time sheets and payments that a practice would otherwise have to handle through its own system.
It includes a full-featured document log where physicians can store their notes and other documents. “That’s a problem itself that a lot of people tried to solve,” Dharmapurikar said.
“It’s mobile-enabled, on the web, and completely automated,” he added.
