Questions healthcare professionals and clinics actually ask.

Healthcare professionals registered with the HPCSA — doctors, nurses, and allied health practitioners — looking for locum shifts in South Africa. And the clinics and hospitals that need to fill cover shifts quickly without going through an agency.

For healthcare professionals: nothing. Zero placement fees, zero subscription — you keep 100% of the posted rate. For facilities: shifts you pay directly carry no platform fee. If you choose to fund a shift through the platform with escrow protection, a 15% platform fee is added on top of the professional's pay — it covers secure payment processing and the escrow service. Pricing details are at /facilities/pricing.

Most healthcare professionals are verified within an hour during business days. We check your HPCSA registration against the live register; if you have an expired registration or a name mismatch, we will email you within 24 hours.

Your HPCSA registration certificate, a valid government-issued ID (RSA ID or passport), and a banking detail confirmation letter for payouts. Optionally: a short bio and a profile photo.

It depends on the shift's payment model, which you see before you apply. On direct-pay shifts the facility pays you directly on the terms you agreed (typically the next business day) — the platform takes nothing and holds no funds. On escrow shifts the facility funded your pay into escrow at shift-post time (not at booking-accept time, so the money was real before you ever applied); once the shift is completed and released, you are paid by EFT to your nominated bank account, typically within 1-2 business days.

Via PayFast, a licensed South African financial services provider. Funds are held in escrow under their licence, not in Locum company accounts. Payouts come into your nominated bank account.

Your /locum/payments page shows every Payment record: gross, platform fee, any cancellation holdbacks, net, and the bank reference once paid out. Filter by date range with the chip row at the top.

Out-of-band bank transfers (the typical pilot case if ops settled you separately) are recorded against the same Payment row with status "Manually settled by admin" and the bank reference visible inline, so you can cross-check against your statement.

A booking can only be marked completed after at least one valid QR attendance scan against the facility's rotating attendance code. Once completed and released, your escrowed pay is paid out by EFT for that shift, typically within 1-2 business days. If the facility disputes attendance despite a recorded scan, the audit trail (scan timestamp, JWT identifier, geofence row, message log) is reviewed by Locum operations.

You can scan the facility's attendance QR up to 30 minutes before the shift start and up to 60 minutes after the end. Beyond that window the scan is refused. If you are running late, message the facility directly from the booking detail page so it's on the record.

The facility shows you a QR code on their dashboard during the shift window. Open your booking, tap "Scan to confirm attendance", point your phone camera at the code. The scan is recorded in your audit trail; without it the booking cannot be marked completed.

Yes — open your booking and tap "Cancel this booking". The penalty depends on lead time. 48+ hours before start: no impact. 24-48 hours: a small private signal only. 2-24 hours: a "late cancel" on your reliability score, decaying linearly over 12 months. Under 2 hours ("critical"): a significant reliability hit PLUS a 25% cash penalty of the planned shift cost, deducted from your next escrow payout. The first 2-24h or critical cancel in any rolling 90-day window is automatically excused (genuine emergencies). Admin may waive the penalty after an emergency review on documented evidence.

No. Use the cancel form to flag the reason; if it qualifies (illness, family emergency, transport breakdown) admin can waive the penalty after a brief review. The waiver flips the cancellation_penalty_waived flag and recomputes your reliability score.

We do not use opaque algorithms. You set filters (specialty, location, date, minimum rate); we show every open shift that matches, sorted by start time. You decide what to apply for.

Yes. We have filed a Data Protection Impact Assessment with the Information Regulator. Every shift generates a downloadable audit pack with timestamps, QR attendance scans, geofence rows, hash-chained logs, and the escrow ledger. See /privacy for the full policy.

Under POPIA you have the right to delete. We honour that within 14 days. Personal data is purged; audit logs of past shifts are retained (anonymised) for 7 years as required by financial regulation. You can also export everything we hold about you from your profile settings.

Facilities can see your name, photo, specialties, qualifications, HPCSA number, experience, and rating only after you apply for one of their shifts. Before that, you appear in their search results anonymously (specialty + experience only).

The moment you fund the escrow your shift goes live on the open board for every HPCSA-verified professional in your specialty + geography. Fill speed depends on how many professionals match — we publish pilot-wave fill-time data once we have enough sample size to be honest about it.

Yes. Every applicant comes with HPCSA registration number, verified credentials, specialty list, years of experience, and aggregated ratings from past shifts.

A booking can only be marked completed if at least one QR attendance scan exists — so a no-show simply fails the completion gate. From the booking detail page you can flag the no-show, which automatically broadcasts the slot to the backup roster (tiered: prior applicants, your alumni, specialty + geo matches) and refunds your professional-pay portion to your wallet or original source. The platform fee is retained because the matching work was already done.

You'll see a red banner on your dashboard the moment it happens. Escrow is refunded immediately. Tap "Find a backup" to open the recovery panel — we've already ranked every professional who could realistically take this shift. Alumni who've worked here before sit at the top, then your previous applicants for this shift, then a wider match by specialty and distance. "Invite top 3" handles the whole decision in one tap.

Open the "Trusted professionals" page in your dashboard nav. It lists every professional who has completed at least one shift at your facility in the last 12 months, with how often they've worked here, their last shift date, and their distance. Useful for inviting specific people directly to upcoming shifts.

Yes — once you post your first shift, you can save it as a template for one-click re-posting. Useful for facilities running regular weekly cover.

At post time. You compose the shift, then fund escrow from your wallet, by card, or a mix of both. Funds sit in escrow with our licensed FSP (PayFast) until the shift completes; once it is completed and released the professional is paid by EFT, typically within 1-2 business days. Your shift is invisible to professionals until escrow is funded — pay first, then it goes live.

Prepaid credit you can use to fund shifts instantly without a PayFast redirect. Top it up directly, or let refunds from cancelled/unfilled shifts land as wallet credit instead of returning to your bank. Reduces friction for high-volume facilities.

When the shift's start time passes without an accepted professional, we surface a choice: refund to your bank, or keep as wallet credit for future shifts. Either way you don't lose the money.