A locum or portfolio GP faces a genuinely different set of priorities from a salaried GP embedded in one practice, and platforms built primarily around practice-level integration solve a problem that simply does not apply the same way to a working life spanning multiple organisations, multiple roles, and no single employer holding the relationship an integrated toolkit assumes.
The comparison criteria that actually matter here
Ownership independent of employer: since no single organisation should hold or control the portfolio a locum or portfolio GP carries between engagements. Mobile capture: genuinely more important than for a desk-based salaried GP, since evidence needs capturing wherever and whenever a session happens to fall. Email forwarding: a low-friction capture method that fits irregular, multi-site working particularly well. Multiple roles and organisations: the platform's ability to tag and organise evidence by role and employer cleanly, rather than assuming one continuous practice context. Evidence from teaching, leadership, urgent care, research and private practice: the genuinely wider range of activity a portfolio GP's whole scope typically includes, which the RCGP is explicit must all be covered, since medical appraisal covers every role requiring a licence to practise, not only a single NHS GP position. Employer contact details: practical administrative information a locum needs readily available and organised, not scattered across memory or email. Template letters of no concern: a genuinely useful time-saver for closing out short-term engagements cleanly. PSQ and MSF for clinicians without a stable patient list: a specific practical challenge locums face that feedback tools built around a settled practice population do not always accommodate well. QIA for locums: similarly, quality-improvement activity looks different without a fixed patient population to audit, and worth checking any platform's QIA guidance specifically addresses this. Data export when changing designated body: a genuinely likely event for a portfolio career, making export quality a first-order consideration rather than an edge case. And long-term record access: since a locum's professional history needs to remain accessible across employment gaps and platform changes in a way a continuously employed salaried GP's arrangement does not force as directly.
The likely recommendations
FourteenFish where frictionless mobile and email capture is the priority, since its specific strengths align closely with exactly the irregular, on-the-go working pattern this comparison is built around. GP Tools where cost and included feedback tools are decisive, particularly for a locum paying personally without practice or ICB subsidy, and where the platform's appraiser-account and feedback inclusion reduces the administrative burden of coordinating PSQ and MSF independently. Clarity where an organisation, an agency, a federation, or a specific engagement, already provides it, extracting value from an arrangement you are not personally paying for. BMJ Portfolio or Umbil as a year-round capture layer beneath whichever system of record you choose, particularly valuable for a locum whose learning happens across genuinely varied contexts a single practice-integrated tool might not capture cleanly. And iatroX for assessed evidence specifically, since a portfolio career benefits disproportionately from a knowledge record that travels with the clinician rather than any single organisation, exactly the portability this whole comparison is built around.
What the RCGP's own guidance confirms
Medical appraisal must cover all roles requiring a licence to practise, not only an individual's primary NHS GP position specifically, which for a genuine portfolio GP means teaching, leadership, research or private work all belong in the same appraisal narrative rather than treated as separate, disconnected mini-appraisals. The practical implication for platform choice: whichever system you select needs to accommodate this breadth cleanly, tagged by role and organisation, rather than assumed to fit a single-employer template.
Frequently asked questions
Does locum work genuinely require a different platform from salaried practice?
Not necessarily a different platform, though it does demand weighting the comparison criteria differently, mobile capture and portability rising in priority relative to deep single-practice integration, which can change which platform comes out ahead for a given individual even among the same core options.
How should a locum handle feedback collection without a stable patient list?
Check any platform's specific PSQ and MSF guidance for locum and non-fixed-list clinicians directly, since this is a genuinely harder practical problem than for a settled-practice GP, and platforms vary in how well they address it.
Should a portfolio GP use one platform for every role, or separate tools per role?
One platform for the actual appraisal narrative is strongly preferable, since the RCGP's whole-scope requirement means every role needs representing in a single coherent appraisal, even where the underlying evidence-capture tools feeding that narrative vary by role.
What is the single most common mistake locums make with their portfolio?
Treating each engagement as a fresh start rather than a continuous professional record: evidence, contacts and reflections scattered across separate short-term arrangements are considerably harder to assemble at appraisal time than a single running record maintained consistently regardless of which specific practice or agency a given week's work happened to be for.