A message to twelve doctors at nine at night
One of your regular sessional GPs has a family emergency and cannot do Thursday afternoon. The practice manager scrolls through their phone and sends messages to the doctors who sometimes cover. Some reply, some do not. Two say yes, so one has to be told no. By the time a doctor is confirmed, reception have already started moving Thursday's patients to other days.
Next month the rota has five open sessions in the summer holidays. The same process happens again, spread over a fortnight, in between everything else.
Why cover is so manual
Private GP clinics often rely on a mix of salaried, sessional and occasional locum doctors. Availability changes weekly. The rota is a spreadsheet or a calendar, and the list of who can cover what is informal: which doctors are approved, which sites they know, which appointment types they do.
There is no shared place where a doctor can see an open session and say yes. Everything flows through one person, which makes that person a bottleneck and makes cover fragile when they are away.
Checks add friction. Before a new locum works, their registration, indemnity and other documents should be on file under your policy. When cover is arranged in a hurry, those checks are the easiest thing to skip.
What uncovered sessions cost
| Problem | Cost |
|---|---|
| Session cancelled | Patients moved or turned away, income lost |
| Late confirmation | Reception rebooking patients just in case |
| Double cover | Two doctors told yes, one let down |
| Rushed checks | A doctor working before their documents are on file |
| Manager as bottleneck | Evenings and weekends spent on messages |
How we build a session cover board
- The rota lives in one place, synced with your practice system's diary so sessions and clinicians match.
- When a session opens, the manager posts it to the board with the site, time, appointment types and rate, or it posts automatically when a doctor's leave is approved.
- Approved doctors get a notification and can claim the session. The first eligible claim is accepted, and everyone else sees it has gone.
- Each claim is checked against the doctor's record: documents in date, site access set up and appointment types they are approved for. Claims that fail the check go to the manager instead of being accepted.
- Accepted sessions update the diary and the doctor receives the details for the day.
- A forward view warns about sessions still open as the date approaches, so there is time to act.
Who is approved to work, and what checks they need, is your policy. The board applies it consistently, including in a hurry.
What cover looks like afterwards
The manager posts a session and gets on with the day. Doctors who want extra work see what is available and claim it themselves. Checks happen as part of accepting the session, not as an afterthought. Patients are moved only when a session truly cannot be filled, and the manager knows that earlier.
If cover is regularly short at certain times, the board makes that visible, which helps when you plan recruitment.
Doctors like it as well. Sessional GPs can see open work in one place and pick sessions that suit them, instead of waiting for a message that might come at an awkward moment. For a clinic competing with others for the same pool of good locums, being easy to work with is a real advantage.
Is cover a scramble for you?
- Open sessions are filled by messaging doctors one by one
- Patients have been moved when a session might have been covered
- Two doctors have been told yes for the same session
- Locum documents are checked after the doctor has started
- Cover stops when the practice manager is on holiday