Marc Ayoub, MD, founded Saile to address a problem that often goes overlooked in discussions of the clinician workforce: the time it takes clinicians to get credentialed and connected to available work.
Dr. Ayoub, a neurocritical care physician, said he encountered the issue after completing his fellowship, when credentialing for his full-time position took 120 days. An urgent care center in New York where he sought shifts in the interim told him insurance enrollment would take 45 days — altogether representing two issues in physician hiring, Dr. Ayoub told Becker’s.
“Staffing agencies are gatekeepers, and credentialing is a bottleneck,” he said.
Dr. Ayoub and his co-founder publicly launched the New York City-based company in May after raising $2.2 million in pre-seed funding. Its platform combines credentialing and staffing tools.
Dr. Ayoub said many clinicians want additional work but have difficulty finding it, and they face repeated credentialing requirements when they do.
“I think clinicians, we want to work more. We’ve been trained to work more ever since we’ve been in residency. We’ve been doing moonlighting, and we just want access to job opportunities. The problem is we can’t find those job opportunities, and then once we do, we go through the same redundant process of turning in all our credentialing documents, filling out multiple paperwork, getting verified across the board, even though I’m verified down the street,” he said.
Clinicians who download Saile undergo primary source verification and can upload and store their credentialing documents in the platform. Saile notifies clinicians and organizations when documents expire, and the two can communicate directly through the app.
To keep profiles current, Saile ties credentialing to a shift marketplace.
“Our hook is a shift marketplace, and in order for a doctor to get access to telemedicine gigs or surveys or consulting or local per diem opportunities, their profile has to stay up to date,” Dr. Ayoub said.
Clinicians can share their profiles with organizations, which then complete their own internal verification.
“Doctors are able to, with one click of a button, share their profile to any organization. They do their internal verification, but we’ve already cut off 45 days from that process,” Dr. Ayoub said.
For organizations, Saile is designed as an alternative to staffing agencies.
“When they have a gap in coverage, rather than going through a staffing agency who mark up the rates 40% to 50%, what we did was allow all local clinicians to apply to their job opportunities. They can pre-vet the candidates and then essentially build a local float pool in the exact same tool where they can manage their internal workforce,” he said.
Organizations can also use the platform to contact local clinicians who have previously engaged with them when internal coverage gaps arise.
Dr. Ayoub said clinicians have responded well to the platform. Saile has 6,000 organic downloads and is used by about 26 urgent care sites in New York and by telehealth systems, according to Dr. Ayoub. The company launched a pilot with a health system this week. The platform serves physicians and advanced practice providers, including CRNAs.
One challenge Dr. Ayoub has faced in developing Saile is that staffing and credentialing are often two different line items.
“So identifying the right buyer has been a little difficult because if staffing needs it, then credentialing essentially is like, ‘Wait, wait, we already have a credentialing system,'” he said.
However, Saile now offers its staffing and credentialing tools as separate modules.
“You don’t have to buy the whole platform. You can buy staffing if you want staffing, or credentialing if you want credentialing,” Dr. Ayoub said. “In the next few months, we should definitely take off in a way that I think would benefit both orgs and doctors.”
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