Barton Associates
Augmenting Healthcare With Locum Tenens & Travel Clinicians

The healthcare sector in the U.S. employs more than 22 million professionals, contributing significantly to the nation's GDP. But, with ongoing public health concerns and the baby boomer generation nearing retirement age (now coined the "Silver Tsunami"), the industry desperately needs more qualified professionals. Recent studies have stated that the healthcare industry requires a 13 percent uptick in employment by 2031 to address the ever-increasing healthcare needs of the American population.

However, finding qualified professionals in an industry where talent is already spread thin is a challenging task. On top of this, the U.S. healthcare industry is witnessing a mass exodus of professionals, including nurses, physicians, lab technicians and service workers. Existing teams are stressed, overworked, and burned out. As a result, facilities are now banging the drum, restating the ongoing talent shortage while connecting the dots between understaffed teams and patient safety.

All of this prevents healthcare facilities from fulfilling their mission—providing the best healthcare to their communities on a timely basis. Locum tenens staffing and recruiting experts are desperately needed to fill staff vacancies and successfully run facilities.

Enter the Barton Companies: Barton Associates, Barton Healthcare Staffing, and Wellhart.

Barton Associates, the largest brand of the Barton Companies, is the 4th largest locum tenens physician, dentist, nurse practitioner, and physician assistant staffing and recruiting firm dedicated to helping practices find qualified professionals and meet their healthcare and business objectives. The firm recruits skilled professionals in various specialties and assigns them as locum tenens at hospitals, practices, and organizations throughout the U.S. With over 800 employees and 10 offices coast to coast, Barton Associates is ideally positioned to efficiently and accurately match highly qualified providers with clients’ varying talent requirements. Whether personnel shortages are planned or unplanned, the Barton Associates team is well-equipped with the experience and tools to staff healthcare facilities across the U.S., in a wide variety of practice areas.

“We’re a proactive recruiting machine. Our mission is to proactively recruit providers for our clients to help them fulfill their mission,” says Rob Indresano, CEO of Barton Associates.

Covering the Gamut of Healthcare

Adhering to this goal since its inception, Barton Associates works extensively with healthcare facilities of all types and sizes, providing the gamut of healthcare staffing services. Together with its subsidiaries, Barton Healthcare Staffing and Wellhart, it places locum tenens physicians, dentists, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants, travel allied health professionals, specialty nurses, technologists, lab technicians, therapists, and pharmacists at hospitals, long-term care facilities, private practices, and local, state, and federal run government facilities. This helps healthcare facilities fill their talent gaps and get back on track, delivering uninterrupted care to patients in the post-pandemic world, where the impact of the talent shortage is even more impactful.

By providing clients with healthcare professionals, The Barton Companies empower them to stay ahead of the curve, with greater productivity and higher efficiency. Temporary professionals are instrumental in filling short- and long-term talent needs for clients. They’re also ideal for high-stress or extremely challenging physical locations, where the ability to rotate healthcare professionals and thus avoid burnout can ensure better patient care.

Barton Associates, the 4th largest locum tenens staffing agency in the U.S., is well known for its ability to serve small rural clinics and Indian Health Services facilities that often have little to no access to surgeons, dentists, or behavioral health providers. Numerous critical access hospitals, IHS facilities, and rural dental clinics rely on its temporary providers to deliver care to their underserved communities.

For example, over 65 percent of the senior population in rural Maine require specialty care. But, with limited access to healthcare providers, rural clinics and IHS facilities often lack the professional medical staff to see patients in person, conduct surgeries on time, and provide routine care. By placing locum tenens at these rural clinics and IHS facilities, Barton Associates keeps them up-to-speed with business operations while streamlining and increasing availability of care in rural communities and impoverished areas.

“We like to think of our locums in a similar way to doctors without borders. Just like doctors go overseas to provide care in underserved countries, we provide those who chose to save lives with opportunities to serve the underserved communities in our country,” states Lina Gallotto, Executive Vice President of Barton Associates and President of Barton Healthcare Staffing. In 2020, Barton Associates opened a government arm, Wellhart, to help local, state, and federal agencies with staffing and rapid deployment assistance.”

Putting the Expertise to Test

The Barton Companies’ business model is built around the notion of constant communication and proactive relationship-building with clients, medical providers, and clinicians. This empowers the Barton Companies to stay up-to-date with their clients’ needs and objectives while allowing it to provide the best locum tenens and travel clinicians to meet their business requirements. It constantly works on building a database of providers and other healthcare professionals to place talent as quickly as possible.

To expedite the placement of providers, The Barton Companies’ adopts a comprehensive approach when speaking with clients and locums or travel clinicians. This information helps to match healthcare professionals with opportunities at facilities that are mutually beneficial. For example, Barton Associates can provide bilingual locums, allowing clients to better serve local communities without downtime for linguistics training.

In essence, teams always stay on top of client requirements, to ensure their placing the appropriate providers to support their patient population and maintain care continuity. It’s also keen to invest in technologies, helping it stay true to its promises and service excellence. The company has a licensing program, buying licenses to expedite upcoming assignments for care providers. It has invested heavily in this, as its ROI benefits clients and providers.

In addition to the many benefits for facilities, the model offers opportunities to healthcare professionals to work with flexibility, essential to avoiding burnout and stress.

When Experience Leads to Excellence

The success of the Barton Companies lies in its leadership team’s extensive experience and expertise in all aspects of the staffing market, including the temporary healthcare staffing industry. The team is fueled by the passion to make a difference in the healthcare domain, passion which is passed on to all employees. Barton Associates' core drivers are its ability to build a business from scratch and train beginners to be experts in the industry.

Extensive, on-going training from day one ensures that its employees have a deep understanding of the staffing space and specialization in healthcare markets. Barton develops experts in healthcare staffing.

“At Barton Associates, we don’t have generalist leaders. Teams are developed by specialty to better understand and meet our clients’ needs,” adds Mary Ann Stolgitis, President, Wellhart.

Adopting a two-pronged approach to gain a holistic view of customer needs, a typical engagement with the Barton Companies’ begins with the company assigning highly trained account executives to learn what clients are looking for, such as providers needed, skills, logistics, and other facility needs. Based on these insights, a designated recruiter finds the best medical provider to fill the gap in coverage.

A Culture at its Best

The culture at the Barton Companies is focused on continuous expansion, and keeping a pulse on the healthcare market to find pockets for growth. It has grown and expanded in the past 13 years to cover all time zones in the U.S. and give clients and medical providers access to resources nearly 24/7. It’s promote-from-within structure allows employees who started with little experience to be promoted to management within a few years, thanks to its top-notch training programs.

To ensure that all employees keep pace with changes in the healthcare and staffing market, teams regularly meet discussing ways to improve the overall experience for clients and medical providers. Additionally, leaders in all business units keep a pulse on the market through attending conferences, visiting clients, and learning from medical providers. This environment allows for substantial personal growth and ensures that leadership understands all aspects of the temporary healthcare staffing market.

“We are a meritocracy and, accordingly, diverse in our culture, and give equal opportunities to all. More than 50 percent of our employees, including management, are women,” adds Indresano.

More in the Pipeline

Immersed in the culture that always strives for expansion, Barton Associates is now expanding its Las Vegas office to serve other regions and bring more clients to the system. It’s doubling the size of the team on the West Coast, where they will be flexible with time zone coverage and proactive in building a database and relationships to better support clients. With its parent firm, Barton Healthcare Staffing will also be expanding in Las Vegas to bring additional coverage for clients.

Wellhart is also looking for an expansion by building a portfolio of government projects and planning to partner with other businesses in the sector, including the Department of Health, Homeland Security, the Defense Health Agency, Department of Defense, and Health and Human Services. This opens up a new window for providers to give back to the country while allowing the company to help the federal government, local, and state government. With its powerful combination of industry expertise, team, and technology, Barton Associates, Barton Healthcare Staffing, and Wellhart are heading toward augmenting U.S. healthcare, with engaged and motivated health care providers delivering better care to communities nationwide.