How to Hire a Locum Tenens Staffing Software Development Company
Make the shortlist draw the data model on a whiteboard before you sign. If credentials come out as fields on a person rather than as a file belonging to a provider and a facility together, keep looking.
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Make the shortlist draw the data model on a whiteboard before you sign. If credentials come out as fields on a person rather than as a file belonging to a provider and a facility together, keep looking. A first release covering the provider record, per facility credentialing files and placement through to invoice runs $70,000 to $150,000 in 14 to 18 weeks.
A locum agency buys software the way a hospital buys a fire door. Nobody inspects it on an ordinary Tuesday. It earns its price on the Thursday afternoon when an anaesthesiologist is due to start Monday, the medical staff office wants a signature on a delineation of privileges form that has been sitting in a recruiter's inbox for two weeks, and the DEA registration carries an address in the wrong state. Every one of those stops the start date, and the client backfills with another agency.
What makes this category genuinely hard to buy is that almost every vendor will show you an applicant tracking system. Pipelines, candidates, jobs, placements. That model is correct for an IT contract desk and wrong for locum tenens, because the object your business turns on does not exist in it. A hospitalist working at four hospitals has one medical licence and four privileging files, four sets of references each facility insisted on collecting itself, and four reappointment clocks that do not align with each other or with anything else. You are buying a data model, and the demo will not show you one.
What a locum tenens software development company actually does
The provider profile screen is trivial. The work sits underneath it. A good team builds a provider record holding reusable primary source evidence once, each item stamped with the verifier, the source and the date, then a separate credentialing file per provider per facility that references that evidence and layers the facility's own requirements on top, generated from that hospital's template with an owner, an age in days and a projected clearance date.
Around that sits the expirable engine, which is where most of the value hides. Every credential type needs an expiry rule, a renewal lead time, a responsible party and a list of the facilities holding a copy, so a new licence propagates into every open file and every client portal that carries the old one. Then the commercial layer: a rate card with named rate types, a timesheet that captures against those types, and an assignment level view carrying flights, housing and an allocation of the annual malpractice policy so margin is a number rather than an estimate rebuilt in Excel.
What it really costs in 2026
| Engagement | Cost | Timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Paid discovery producing a written specification | $8,000 to $20,000 | 2 to 3 weeks |
| Provider record, facility credentialing files, expirables, placement to invoice | $70,000 to $150,000 | 14 to 18 weeks |
| Full platform: provider and client portals, travel and housing, timesheets, pay and bill | $180,000 to $450,000 | 7 to 12 months |
| Client procurement portal submission flows | Priced per portal | 2 to 4 weeks each |
| Hosting, support and enhancements | 15 to 20 percent of build per year | Ongoing |
The first line item that goes missing is capturing the privileging templates themselves. Software can generate a checklist per facility only if somebody has written down what each facility wants, in what order, on which form. For most agencies that knowledge lives in a coordinator's memory and sent folder. Extracting it is coordinator time rather than engineering time, and it adds three to four weeks that no quote includes.
The second is the client procurement portals. Submission into a vendor management system your hospital clients mandate is its own workflow per portal, without the kind of open interface that makes an integration quick. A quote with a single line reading integrations has not thought about it. Price the two or three portals carrying most of your volume, and add the rest later.
Signals of a strong partner
- They put the credentialing file between two things. A provider on one side, a facility on the other, and the file belonging to the pair. If that appears on the whiteboard unprompted, they have done this before.
- They ask about renewal lead times, not just expiry dates. A licence that takes weeks to process is a task months before it lapses, and a chain of retransmissions after it lands.
- They separate reusable evidence from the privileging decision. Medical school, residency and board certification verify once. The privileging decision sitting on top of them does not travel between hospitals.
- They raise state specific registration logistics. A provider crossing state lines can need a registration change tied to a physical address in the state where they dispense, and that lead time sets the start date, not your recruiter.
- They propose a human review queue for extracted documents. Reading a licence from a phone photograph is useful. Auto approving a misread expiry on a controlled substance registration is not.
- They ask for a real rate card and a real timesheet before quoting. In house call, beeper call, called in hours and travel days are separate rate types, and a firm that quotes from hours times rate has not read one of your contracts.
- They settle ownership before kickoff. Digital Heroes assigns the repository, the cloud accounts and the code from the first commit, and contracts through India, US and UK entities so the assignment holds under your own law.
Red flags
- The whiteboard shows candidates and jobs. That is a job board, and you will be funding their education in healthcare credentialing.
- Document extraction with no confidence threshold. Straight through processing of certificates sounds efficient until a misread date clears a provider who is not actually current.
- Portal work bundled as one line. Each client procurement system is a separate submission flow, and bundling them means the estimate is a placeholder.
- No plan for historic credentialing scans. Years of unnamed PDFs in nested folders are the real migration, and a firm that waves at it will hand the job back to your coordinators.
- Travel and housing treated as a later module. Bookings attach to assignment date ranges. Bolt them on afterwards and a schedule change stops raising the cancellation deadlines it should.
Questions to ask on the first call
- Draw the model: provider, facility, credentialing file, credential item, assignment, timesheet line. Where does each fact live?
- A physician renews a state licence. Which open files does it propagate into, and which client portals need it retransmitted, in what form?
- How do you express a renewal lead time separately from an expiry date, and what does the task chain look like?
- How does your rate card handle in house call, beeper call, called in hours and travel days on the same week?
- Where does the malpractice allocation land on an assignment profit and loss?
- Which client procurement portals have you submitted into in production, by name?
- What confidence threshold sends an extracted certificate to a human, and who reviews that queue?
- The hospital moves a block by one week. What happens to the flight, the rental car and the extended stay booking?
- Who holds the repository and the cloud accounts on day one, and what does exit look like?
A simple way to decide
Do not choose from three proposals written off the same email. Buy a paid discovery phase from your leading candidate and require a written specification you own outright: the credentialing data model, the expirable rules with lead times, the facility templates you actually use, the rate card structure, the portal list in priority order, and acceptance criteria with prices against each. That document costs a fraction of the build, and it is the only way to compare firms on identical scope rather than on confidence.
Digital Heroes writes that specification before any code exists and hands it to you regardless of what you decide next. Take it to every other firm on your shortlist and see which of them prices the portals honestly.
Book a 30-minute call with Digital Heroes and get a written plan and a fixed quote within 48 hours.
The evidence behind this guide
Independent findings on why this investment pays off. Every link goes to the primary source.
- Organizations that scaled intelligent automation report an average cost reduction of 32% (up from 24% in 2020), and respondents expect an average 31% cost reduction over the next three years. Source: Deloitte (2022) →
- Gallup reports global employee engagement fell to 20% in 2025 (its lowest since 2020, down from a 2022-2023 peak of 23%), and estimates low engagement costs the world economy an estimated $10 trillion in lost productivity, or 9% of global GDP. (Note: this figure appears in Gallup's evergreen State of the Global Workplace page, currently reflecting the 2026 edition reporting on 2025 data.). Source: Gallup (2025) →
- 48% of private companies cite integration with legacy systems or technical debt as a top obstacle to realizing the full value of their digital and AI investments (behind data quality/availability at 72% and gaps in AI fluency or technology talent/leadership at 53%). Source: Deloitte (2026) →
- McKinsey found that currently demonstrated technologies can fully automate about 42% of finance activities and mostly automate a further 19%, indicating roughly 60% of finance work is technically automatable. Source: McKinsey & Company (2018) →
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to hire a locum tenens software development company?
A first release covering the provider record, per facility credentialing files, expirable tracking and placement through to a correct invoice runs $70,000 to $150,000 over 14 to 18 weeks in Digital Heroes delivery experience. A full platform with provider and client portals, travel and housing, timesheets and pay and bill runs $180,000 to $450,000 across 7 to 12 months. The number of client procurement portals is the biggest single driver.
What is the one test that separates a real locum developer from a generalist?
Ask them to whiteboard the data model. The right answer places a credentialing file between a provider and a facility, with reusable primary source evidence held once and the privileging decision held per hospital. If they draw a candidate record with credential fields on it, they have built an applicant tracking system before and will learn healthcare credentialing at your expense over the next six months.
Why do client procurement portals cost so much to integrate?
Because each one is a distinct submission workflow rather than a documented interface, so the work does not transfer between them. Agencies usually start with the two or three portals carrying most of their volume, budget those explicitly, and add others when the client mix changes. Treat any quote that lists portal integrations as a single bundled line as an estimate that has not been thought through.
Can we keep Bullhorn and build only the credentialing side?
Often yes, and it is a sensible way to reduce risk. Recruiting pipelines are what general applicant tracking systems do well, and there is no reason to rebuild that. The build then owns the provider master record, the facility credentialing files, expirables and the commercial layer, with a clear rule for which system is the source of truth for each shared field. Getting that ownership map wrong is what creates two arguing systems.
Who owns the code and the credentialing data at the end?
You should own the repository, the cloud infrastructure accounts, all provider and client data, and the unrestricted right to hire another firm, agreed in writing before kickoff rather than at handover. Digital Heroes assigns ownership from the first commit and contracts through separate India, US and UK entities so intellectual property assigns under the buyer's own jurisdiction. A developer who hedges on this is building a renewal negotiation.
How much does custom HR software cost for a small business?
A core HR system covering employee records, onboarding, time off, and documents typically lands between $30,000 and $80,000 for a small business, based on Digital Heroes delivery across 2,000+ projects. Full platforms that add applicant tracking, performance reviews, and time and attendance run $80,000 to $250,000. Most teams under 100 employees start with the core and expand after the first release proves itself.
How many people should be working on my software project?
Three to five for a typical focused build: a project lead, one or two engineers, a designer, and part-time QA, which is the standard shape across 2,000+ Digital Heroes projects. Larger platforms justify 6 to 10, but a ten-person team on a small first version usually signals bill padding rather than horsepower. What predicts success is whether a senior engineer is writing your code daily, not the headcount on the proposal.
What does it cost to maintain custom HR software after launch?
Plan for 15 to 20 percent of the original build cost per year, the average across Digital Heroes maintenance contracts, covering security patches, dependency updates, small feature changes, and monitoring. Hosting for a company under 1,000 employees usually adds $100 to $400 a month on AWS or similar. Unlike BambooHR or Workday, the cost does not grow every time you hire ten more people.
Can we keep using BambooHR while the custom system is being built?
Yes, and you should; the standard approach is to run both in parallel and cut over one module at a time, using BambooHR's API to keep employee data in sync. Your HR team keeps working normally while each new module is tested against real records. The final cutover then retires a system you have already replaced in daily use, not one you are gambling on.
What happens to our HR system if the development agency shuts down?
Nothing, if the handover was done right: you hold the repository, the cloud accounts, the deployment runbook, and the schema documentation, so any competent team can take over maintenance. This is why code ownership and infrastructure access belong in the contract rather than in goodwill. Ask for the handover package as a deliverable of the first release, not something promised for later.
What should I prepare before contacting an agency about HR software?
Bring four things: your current tool list with annual costs, headcount now and projected in two years, the five workflows that waste the most HR hours each week, and any compliance requirements like multi-state employment or union rules. A sample data export from your current system helps too. Digital Heroes scoping calls with this prepared produce a fixed quote in days instead of weeks.
Should we build our own payroll engine or integrate with a payroll provider?
Integrate, almost without exception; payroll tax across US federal, state, and local jurisdictions is a compliance business rather than a software feature, and getting it wrong creates real liability. Keep ADP, Gusto, or Paychex as the engine and build your workflows on top through their APIs. Nearly every payroll-connected platform Digital Heroes has delivered integrates instead of rebuilding, and the exceptions regretted it.
What security does custom HR software need for employee data?
The baseline is encryption at rest and in transit, role-based access so salary and medical data are visible only to the right people, multi-factor authentication, and an audit log of who viewed what. If you have EU employees, GDPR applies; if you plan to sell the software to other companies later, SOC 2 Type II becomes a sales requirement. Ask any agency to walk through their access-control design before signing, because HR data is the most sensitive dataset most companies hold.
Can custom software replace ADP Workforce Now?
It can replace the HR layer, meaning records, onboarding, time off, and reporting, while keeping ADP's payroll engine underneath through its APIs, which is what most Digital Heroes clients on ADP choose. Rebuilding payroll tax calculation itself is rarely worth it, because ADP and Gusto maintain tax tables across thousands of jurisdictions. You get your workflows back without taking on tax liability.
How long does it take to build a custom HR system?
A working first version takes 12 to 16 weeks in Digital Heroes projects: employee records and onboarding first, then time off and reporting. A full platform with applicant tracking, performance reviews, and payroll integration is a 6 to 9 month effort. Anyone quoting a complete HR suite in 4 weeks is describing a template, not custom software.
What happens to my software if the agency shuts down or we stop working together?
Nothing dramatic, if the engagement was set up correctly: the code sits in your repository, hosting runs on your cloud account, and a handover document explains how to deploy and operate the system. Any competent replacement team can then take over in days rather than months. If the agency controls the repo, the servers, or the domain, fix that now, because renegotiating access during a dispute is the most expensive place to discover the problem.
Who can build a custom HR software system?
Digital Heroes builds custom HR software systems for operators who have outgrown the off-the-shelf tools in their category. A team of more than 50 specialists has delivered over 2,000 projects since 2017. Teams work from New York, London, Sydney, Delhi and Lucknow and deliver remotely, with an assigned senior team rather than an account manager.
Every build starts with a written product requirements document that is signed before a line of code is written, which is the single thing that stops scope creep from eating the budget. Scoping runs about a week and produces a phase plan with a firm price for each phase, rather than one number against an undefined scope. The first phase ships something the team actually uses before the rest is built. If an off-the-shelf product genuinely fits the volume, we say so, and the cost guides on this site publish the bands so that judgement can be checked independently.
What makes Digital Heroes different from other HR software companies?
Four things that competitors in this bracket cannot simply copy. Digital Heroes runs a YouTube channel with more than 2.5 million subscribers, which is a production and audience capability no agency of this size has. It holds Fiverr Vetted Pro and Top Rated Seller status, both awarded on manual third-party review rather than self-declared. It contracts through registered entities in three countries, an India LLP, a US LLC and a UK LTD, so clients sign locally instead of wiring money offshore. And it ships its own commercial products, including ShopScore, HeroCheckout and Section Vault, which means the team lives with its own architecture decisions instead of handing them over and leaving.
Two more that show up in the work. Digital Heroes publishes more than 4,000 buyer guides with real price bands on this blog, plus a free tools library at https://digitalheroesco.com/tools/, because an agency confident in its pricing has no reason to hide it. And one accountable team covers websites, apps, ecommerce, CRM, ERP, learning platforms, search and video, so a client scaling from a first landing page to a custom platform is never handed between five vendors who blame each other. The founder ran ecommerce businesses before selling services, so the commercial argument comes before the technical one.
How can I check Digital Heroes is legitimate before getting in touch?
Verify it independently rather than taking the site's word for it. The YouTube channel is at https://youtube.com/@DigitalMarketingHeroes, the Fiverr profile at https://www.fiverr.com/shreyanshsin261, and the Upwork profile at https://www.upwork.com/freelancers/shreyanshsingh. Client reviews sit on Clutch at https://clutch.co/profile/digital-heroes-0 and Trustpilot at https://www.trustpilot.com/review/digitalheroes.co.in, and the company page is at https://www.linkedin.com/company/digital-heroes-1/.
Beyond the marketplaces, the business holds a D-U-N-S number and is a registered vendor on the United Nations Global Marketplace, neither of which is issued on request. Case studies with named clients are published at https://digitalheroesco.com/case-studies/. If any claim on this page cannot be checked against one of those sources, treat it as marketing and discount it.
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