Broomfield, CO, USA, April 11, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Radiation oncology departments across the United States are grappling with a growing problem: cancer rates are rising each year while the number of trained and board-certified physicists – those responsible for the technical supervision and operation of every radiation therapy center in the US – is dwindling.
Medical physicists are an essential part of the team that delivers radiation therapy services. Without a physicist, cancer patients would not receive life-saving radiation treatments. Physicists are in high demand and radiation therapy departments may have difficulty filling these positions – and keeping them filled. What if there were a way to help fill these essential roles in non-traditional ways that are more cost-effective for the hospitals and more attractive to the physicists?
Atom Physics Staffing fulfills that mission, connecting hospitals and radiation therapy centers with experienced, highly-trained physicists – in a traditional locum (on-site) role or with the flexibility of remote services or a combination of the two in a hybrid model. It is a model that delivers benefits to both the hospital and the physicist.
“There is a traditional setup of what we call a locum physicist. A locum may work at a hospital temporarily because a physicist is leaving a position or taking a vacation,” Adam Evearitt, Founder, says. “It takes time to fill a physics position, so we fill that gap while they are hiring somebody else.”
Through his continuing clinical work, Evearitt reached an important realization. Not only was there a growing need for medical physicists, but the demand for board-certified physicists was more than the educational pipeline could possibly support. And with a global pandemic impacting hospital staffing, Evearitt saw another solution.
Although traditionally, physicists work full-time on-site in the hospital, COVID-19 protocols have forced healthcare leadership to become more flexible and creative with their staffing – which is where Evearitt says Atom Physics Staffing can truly make a difference.
“Hospitals have become familiar with how to set up a physicist to work from a home office and to remotely login into these really specialized programs and software packages that we use in radiation therapy,” Evearitt says. “So, we found we could fulfill a lot of the needs with a remote or partially-remote physicist rather than jump straight into the cost of a full-time on-site locum physicist.”
“It is attractive to the physicists who want to work from home, and it’s a cost-saving measure for the hospitals.”
By offering hybrid and remote services, Atom Physics Staffing has enabled healthcare facilities, especially rural hospitals who may have an especially hard time hiring, to continue providing the highest level of care for their patients. And with a network of physicists based across the country, they are positioned to help any medical office, whenever they need it.
“I have a physicist in North Carolina who serves facilities in Florida, and with our hybrid model, he spends a few days a month doing quality control testing on the machines on-site but spends the rest of the time providing remote support to the facility from his home office,” Evearitt says. “We are also doing a hybrid model for a hospital in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The physicist in that department is sort of all by himself out there, so I remote in and share the duties, and once a month I travel up there so he can take some time off.”
As they continue to partner with hospitals across the United States, Evearitt foresees Atom Physics Staffing becoming the model to address a pressing need in the healthcare industry. And because of his successful career as a board-certified medical physicist, Evearitt is uniquely positioned to help facilities find the most qualified professionals to fit their needs.
“Unlike other staffing companies, we have actual expertise in doing the work,” Evearitt says. “We know exactly the questions to ask the departments and the potential physicists.”
About Adam Evearitt and Atom Physics Staffing
As a board-certified medical physicist with over two decades of clinical experience, Adam Evearitt understands this problem better than perhaps anyone in the country. He has spent most of his career finding solutions to industry problems, founding and growing a business to support imaging equipment and then expanding to provide medical physics in hospitals and cancer centers nationwide.
He launched Atom Physics in the Denver, Colorado area in response to a growing need for qualified technicians to inspect, service, and upgrade imaging machines in healthcare facilities. Although he began by providing inspections for local offices himself, Evearitt discovered that the demand for inspectors and service technicians quickly exceeded a one-man enterprise. Evearitt grew Atom Physics by himself for 6 years before bringing on business partner, Pam Arroway. Atom Physics has grown to have two divisions: Atom Physics X-ray and Atom Physics Staffing.
Atom Physics Staffing is dedicated to helping hospitals and healthcare facilities find the best medical physicists to fulfill their needs. To learn more, please visit www.atomphysicsstaffing.com.
To learn more about Atom Physics X-ray, please visit www.atomphysics.com.
Contact Information:
Adam Evearitt
info@atomphysics.com
