Ronda.vet co-founders Ibra Hernando and Dimitra Sepou.

Cancellations Have Been Damaging Locum Work For Years But No-one Was Keeping Count - Now Ronda Is

6 days ago
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Posted
19th May, 2026 11h16

Unique dual scoring system gives practices and locums a public reliability record, based on cancellations and notice periods

A last-minute cancellation costs a locum vet a full day’s income. For a practice, it means scrambling for cover at 7am, a collapsing list and patients turned away. 

It is one of the most cited pressures on both sides of UK veterinary locum work and, until now, there has been no way to track it. 

However, UK veterinary locum platform Ronda.vet has changed that with the introduction of a reciprocal reliability rating which allows practices to see, for the first time, how often a locum has cancelled shifts and with how much notice. 

Unlike almost every other professional services sector, UK veterinary locum work has no published data on cancellation rates. 

The problem has been widespread enough to be a routine frustration on both sides of a booking, yet invisible enough that no one has ever measured it. Ronda’s reliability rate is the first systematic attempt to change that, with every confirmed shift creating a public record. 

The feature, now live on Ronda.vet, calculates a reliability score for every practice and locum based solely on confirmed shift cancellations and the notice period given. The score appears publicly on each profile. 

For practice owners, this means being able to rule out locums with a pattern of late cancellations before accepting a booking. For locums, it means seeing which practices have cancelled confirmed shifts at short notice – a direct cause of lost income and wasted diary time. 

Unlike traditional review-based systems, Ronda’s reliability rate is calculated using a standardised penalty points model. Cancellations made 14 days or more before a shift incur 0.5 penalty points, while cancellations with less than 24 hours’ notice, or no-shows, incur five points. 

DATA-DRIVEN

A locum with 12 confirmed shifts and two cancellations (at nine days and three days) would receive a score of 75 per cent, which improves with each completed shift. New practices and locums with no confirmed shifts display “N/A”, while those with penalty points but no offsetting completions may show 0 per cent.

For practices, the same logic applies. A practice which cancels a confirmed shift with less than 24 hours’ notice accrues the same penalty points as a locum doing so, reflecting the lost income and disruption caused to the professional.

The move is one of the first in the UK veterinary recruitment market to apply reciprocal, data-driven reliability metrics rather than relying solely on subjective reviews.

Ibra Hernando, co-founder, Ronda.vet, and veterinary surgeon, said: “Reliability is the foundation of trust in locum work but, until now, it has largely been invisible until something went wrong. 

“By making reliability rates visible and reciprocal, we are giving both practices and locums the same tool to assess each other. That transparency benefits the whole profession, not just practices and locums who use it.” 

The reliability score is designed to be regenerative. A low or zero score can recover as practices and locums confirm and honour more shifts, with each completed shift increasing the total confirmed shift count and diluting the impact of past penalties. 

Practices and locums can view each other’s reliability rates directly on their profiles before confirming a booking. The system applies automatically to every confirmed shift on the platform.

Ronda.vet has also confirmed that exceptional circumstances such as illness or emergency can be reviewed by the support team and that the score is not intended to permanently penalise anyone for isolated incidents.

As the dataset grows, Ronda expects to publish the first industry-wide benchmarks on locum cancellation rates in the UK.

For more information about Ronda Vet, or to join its established community of practices and locum professionals, visit www.ronda.vet. 

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