Locum Staffing SLAs for Dental Groups: What to Insist On

Most dental groups sign locum staffing agreements on price and promises. The contracts that actually protect a group are built on measurable service levels, and most suppliers hope you never ask for them.

Before signing with any dental locum staffing supplier, a dental group should insist on five service-level terms: published fill-rate and time-to-fill data, automatic replacement cover when a locum cancels, a defined compliance re-verification cadence, transparent per-shift pricing with no markups, and support with a stated response time.

This guide sets out each term, the benchmark numbers to hold suppliers against, and what you need to set up a group account when you are ready to move.

The five service-level terms every dental group should demand

1. Published fill-rate and time-to-fill data

A supplier that cannot tell you what percentage of requested shifts get filled, and how long filling takes, is asking you to buy on faith. Insist on both numbers in writing, and insist on ongoing reporting so you can verify them against your own group’s experience rather than a sales average.

2. Automatic replacement cover for cancellations

Locum cancellations are inevitable at group scale. What matters is the recovery process. Ask whether the replacement search starts automatically, whether it runs outside office hours, and what percentage of cancelled shifts get refilled. "We’ll do our best" is not a service level. A refill percentage is.

3. A defined compliance re-verification cadence

GDC registration, indemnity, and right to work are not one-off checks. A clinician can lapse or be suspended mid-engagement. Ask any supplier how often each worker’s registration is re-verified, and whether that process is automated or depends on someone remembering. For a group, one non-compliant clinician in one practice is a group-level regulatory problem.

4. Transparent per-shift pricing with no markups

Traditional agency pricing buries a margin inside the hourly rate, which makes group-level cost control nearly impossible. Insist on seeing the worker’s rate and the supplier’s fee as separate, fixed line items. If the supplier cannot separate them, you cannot audit them.

5. Support with a stated response time

When a locum problem happens, it happens at 7.45am with patients in the waiting room. A support inbox with a 48-hour turnaround is worthless to a practice manager in that moment. Ask for a stated response time and test it before you sign, not after.

What good looks like: benchmark numbers

Terms only work if you know what to demand. These are the benchmarks Airlocum operates to, and they are a fair yardstick to hold any supplier against:

How dental groups reduce agency spend without sacrificing reliability

The largest hidden cost in group locum staffing is not the fee. It is the absence of control: every practice booking independently, at whatever rate the agency quotes, with no shared record of who was good and who was not.

The alternative dental groups are moving to is the platform model, where practices book verified locums directly and head office keeps oversight. Four controls do most of the work:

• Group-wide rate caps. Head office sets maximum hourly rates per role across every practice. Practice managers keep booking freedom within those limits, and search results only show locums inside the approved range.
• A shared blocklist. When 2 or more practices in a group block the same locum, that locum is blocked group-wide. Quality decisions stop being trapped in one practice’s memory.
• Shared favourites. Practices can see which locums other sites in the group have favourited, so proven performers get rebooked across the whole organisation.
• Central reporting. A single dashboard shows days booked, average daily spend, and total locum spend per practice, exportable to Excel for finance.

Airlocum corporate clients have reduced locum spend by 12% after implementing group-wide rate controls, shared quality lists, and central reporting. The saving comes from control and consistency, not from paying clinicians less.

"Airlocum has genuinely changed the game for us at Banning Dental Group. What Eugene and the team have built isn’t just a platform — it’s a solution shaped around the realities of running a fast paced dental group. It’s made the process seamless for our teams and the group-level oversight is excellent — we can see exactly where the usage has been and how/who it’s been covered by and the spend. We only use Airlocum now!"

— Suzie Lovick, Operations Manager, Banning Dental Group

Setting up a group account: what you need

Setting up a group account on Airlocum takes a short list of information and no IT project:

1. A list of your practice locations with postcodes.
2. Named users for each practice, plus head office administrators who need group-level access.
3. Your payment preference for each practice: card, which processes automatically after timesheet approval, or invoicing.
4. Any group rate policy you want applied from day one, with maximum hourly rates per role.

Area managers and head office staff use one login with an account switcher, moving between practices without logging in and out. The Airlocum team handles the setup with you, and most groups are live across all sites within days, not months.

Questions to ask any supplier before you sign

Take these into any procurement conversation. Good suppliers answer them with numbers; weak ones answer with reassurance:

1. What is your fill rate, and what is your median time to fill?
2. When a locum cancels, what happens, how fast, and what does it cost us?
3. How often do you re-verify GDC registration, indemnity, and right to work?
4. Can we see the worker’s rate and your fee separately on every booking?
5. Can head office cap rates, share quality lists, and see spend across all sites?
6. What is your support response time, and who do we escalate to?
7. What is the employment status of the workers you supply, and how is it documented in the contract chain?

Are locums booked through Airlocum self-employed?

Yes. Locums on Airlocum are self-employed contractors who enter a direct contract for services with the practice for each engagement. The practice pays the locum directly for their work, and Airlocum invoices only its platform fee, so the two amounts are always separate and visible. The terms governing each engagement are publicly available on the Airlocum website.

Read our ESM4030 / employment status post 

The takeaway

A locum staffing contract without service levels is a hope, not an agreement. Put the five terms in writing, hold every supplier to benchmark numbers, and insist on group-level controls so cost and quality decisions are made once, centrally, instead of separately in every practice.

If you manage locum staffing across multiple dental practices, see how a group account works at airlocum.co.uk.