Editor’s Note
Retention accountability is one of those problems that looks solved from a distance and isn’t. The research covered in this edition of Locums Digest found that fewer than half of healthcare organizations have a formal strategy and that the work happening in most places is scattered, unmeasured, and disconnected from the people who could act on it. Closing that gap is less about adding programs than about deciding who is responsible and building the infrastructure to know whether anything is working.
The physician pipeline adds a longer-term dimension to that pressure. Federal student loan changes taking effect this year are already prompting some aspiring doctors to extend timelines, reconsider specialties, or change paths entirely. That won’t show up as an open shift tomorrow, but it’ll shape candidate pools, geographic mobility, and the supply of clinicians willing to work in underserved areas for years to come.
Payment reform is adding another layer. As reimbursement shifts toward quality and care coordination, staffing gaps no longer affect only patient access. They influence documentation continuity, quality performance, and a facility’s ability to participate in the models that will define revenue going forward. Workforce strategy is becoming inseparable from operational performance, and the decisions made today will shape both for years to come.
– The Locumpedia Editorial Team
Lead Story
The Retention Problem No One Owns in Healthcare: A Conversation with AAPPR CEO Carey Goryl
July 1, 2026 | Medical Group Management Association
Most healthcare organizations haven’t named who owns provider retention, even as staffing shortages, physician turnover, and labor costs keep mounting. Research from the Association for Advancing Physician and Provider Recruitment, conducted with CHG Healthcare, found that only about 40% of surveyed organizations had a formal retention strategy, another 40% reported scattered activity by department or available budget, and 15% to 20% had no strategy at all. The research introduced a maturity continuum framework for facilities at any stage of readiness. Even those without a formal plan can start by documenting existing efforts, naming formal or informal owners, and assembling a cross-functional group across HR, recruitment, operations, clinical leadership, and executive leadership.
A counterintuitive finding is that HR is often least involved in clinician retention. Those efforts more commonly center on compensation, bonuses, incentives, contract structure, mentorship, scheduling, and administrative support. Hospitals and other healthcare organizations also lack the foundational metrics needed to track progress, such as days to fill, cost to hire, and first-year and five-year retention rates, without which strategies cannot evolve or be linked to outcomes.
Physician attrition translates directly into vacancy pressure, coverage churn, and higher dependence on temporary staffing. When permanent physician retention breaks down, the first week of onboarding and the first three to six months after hire are often where the problem begins. Health systems that treat retaining clinicians as a shared operating priority rather than an HR function tend to reduce those preventable gaps. Locum tenens agencies that understand which clients have defined ownership, consistent data, and disciplined integration practices are better positioned to place well and plan ahead.
La Vida Locum
Healthcare Workforce Planning: Why Proactive Staffing Is More Important Than Ever
July 2, 2026 | MPLT Healthcare
Healthcare organizations that start staffing conversations before schedules are strained gain broader access to qualified physicians, more time for credentialing and orientation, and better continuity of care. Effective planning asks which specialties will be hardest to recruit over the next year, where burnout risk is rising, and what staffing model gives the facility the most flexibility. Scheduling analytics, patient volume forecasting, and recruitment metrics are helping leaders identify trends earlier and act before gaps become urgent.
Locum tenens has evolved from a last-minute fix into a strategic component of long-term workforce planning, with facilities incorporating temporary physicians into hybrid staffing models that maintain coverage while permanent recruitment continues. Employers that can share clean data, project needs, and start searches early give staffing partners more room to match for fit rather than scrambling for availability. Those clients tend to produce smoother assignments and stronger outcomes on both sides of the relationship.
NPs and PAs Are at the Center of the Changing Healthcare Workforce
July 6, 2026 | Barton Associates
Nurse practitioners and physician assistants are growing faster than any other segment of the clinical workforce, with Bureau of Labor Statistics projections showing employment up 35% for the former and 20% for the latter between 2024 and 2034. Physicians remain central to complex diagnosis, specialized procedures, and care team leadership, but the overall workforce mix is shifting toward collaborative models where APPs handle significant portions of primary and acute care. More than 100 million Americans live in federally designated shortage areas, and NPs and PAs are absorbing much of that access gap.
The scope landscape is also moving. Twenty-eight states and Washington, DC, now grant full practice authority to NPs, and PA practice modernization efforts alongside a growing PA Licensure Compact are making cross-state practice easier for eligible providers. Facilities using locum NPs and PAs to cover vacancies, leaves, and seasonal volume increases are better positioned when they understand state scope rules, compact participation, and specialty-specific demand.
How Exit Interviews Can Improve Your Staffing Strategy
July 7, 2026 | ConnectHealth
Interviewing clinicians leaving your facility provides one of the few opportunities to learn what’s actually driving turnover, and many healthcare organizations treat these conversations as a formality rather than a data source. When reviewed for patterns across roles, locations, shifts, and tenure, the feedback can reveal where schedules are unrealistic, workloads are unevenly distributed, and coverage problems have become chronic enough to push permanent staff out. The goal is finding the planning gaps hiding behind individual departures.
Agency usage comes up in exit interviews more often than administrators expect. When departing staff describe constant instability, training temporary help that never stayed, or management substituting outside coverage for a real staffing solution, that’s a signal the workforce model is structurally understaffed rather than a short-term problem being managed. Organizations that use exit data to examine whether partnering with locum staffing firms reflects a planning gap, rather than a legitimate short-term need, tend to make more durable staffing decisions.
Locum Leaders
- SCI Anesthesia Services rebranded as SCI Healthcare following the launch of a new surgical staffing division that expands its services beyond anesthesia.
- KPG Healthcare announced a joint venture with Advetage, LLC, a veteran-owned business, to expand access to healthcare workforce solutions.
- AMN Healthcare has been named to TIME’s inaugural World’s Most Impactful Companies list for 2026.
Hire Power
The Gig Economy Is Here to Stay. Here’s What It Means for Healthcare
July 2, 2026 | LocumTenens.com
Gig work has become a permanent feature of healthcare staffing rather than a stopgap measure, driven by the projected shortage of physicians and 92% of healthcare leaders reporting worse staff well-being due to shortages. At least 42 million people in the US were engaged in some form of contract work in 2025, and a younger generation of clinicians is entering the workforce expecting schedule control and flexibility that traditional employment models rarely offer. With 37 states projecting a healthcare workforce shortage by 2028, facilities that build gig-compatible staffing models now are better positioned to match clinician supply with fluctuating patient demand.
Making gig staffing work depends on credentialing processes and onboarding discipline. It also relies on scheduling support that keeps locums connected to an organization’s culture rather than treating them as interchangeable coverage. Locum staffing companies and healthcare employers that invest in those foundations tend to produce more consistent opportunities and stronger long-term relationships with the clinicians they need most.
Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Is Driving Aspiring Doctors to Reconsider Their Careers
July 2, 2026 | CNN
New federal student loan limits are reshaping how aspiring physicians finance medical education, with annual caps of $50,000 and a lifetime limit of $200,000 now in place for professional programs, and the Grad PLUS program eliminated for new borrowers. The Association of American Medical Colleges says nearly half of medical students relied on Grad PLUS, borrowing more than $1 billion annually through the program, and warns the changes could push students toward private loans or away from healthcare careers entirely. Some pre-med students are already extending their timelines, reconsidering specialties, or changing course altogether.
The staffing market eventually inherits every upstream bottleneck in the physician pipeline. Heavier private debt loads, longer pathways to practice, and reduced access for lower-income students can shift specialty selection, geographic mobility, and willingness to work in underserved areas. Locum agencies and healthcare organizations that track this policy closely will have earlier visibility into the candidate pool pressures that tend to surface years before they show up as open shifts.
Why Proactive Locum Tenens Staffing Outperforms the Alternative
July 2, 2026 | Amergis
The median time to fill a physician role is 118 days, with specialties like oncology averaging more than 300. Every day a position sits empty, ancillary revenue tied to imaging, procedures, referrals, and retained patients stalls with it. The AMA estimates physician burnout costs the US healthcare system approximately $4.6 billion annually, and replacing a burned-out doctor can run between $500,000 and $1 million per provider when recruitment fees, lost billings, and other factors are considered.
Rural and community hospitals face an additional risk. When a specialty goes offline and patients shift to a larger system, they often don’t return for primary care or other services, turning a staffing gap into a lasting market share problem. Facilities that engage a staffing partner before a vacancy becomes urgent have more time to credential providers, negotiate rates, and build a qualified candidate bench. Those that wait typically face urgency premiums, a smaller talent pool, and less leverage, while running locum coverage alongside permanent recruitment keeps service lines open and helps contain costs.
Making the Rounds
Healthcare Burnout Looks Different Now: 5 Leaders Explain What’s Driving It
June 29, 2026 | Becker’s Hospital Review
Clinical burnout didn’t end when the pandemic did; it expanded with deferred patient demand and a harder-to-define strain, one without a common enemy or a clear endpoint. Five healthcare leaders describe how it has evolved since that time. Financial pressure, staffing constraints, regulatory complexity, patient volume, institutional uncertainty, and moral distress are now converging to reshape the clinician experience.
AI tools have reduced parts of the documentation burden, but haven’t addressed the broader workforce stress, and surface-level wellness gestures are increasingly counterproductive when clinicians feel the underlying conditions haven’t changed. Burnout fuels turnover, leave, reduced hours, and vacancy pressure that facilities then try to address with locum coverage. Organizations that use temporary staffing while also improving workload design, staffing levels, and operational support tend to get more durable results than those using coverage as a substitute for the more difficult changes.
Disabilities and Healthcare: How Can We Improve?
July 6, 2026 | Tribal Health
Disability is more common in healthcare workforces than most organizations account for, with roughly 30% fitting the current federal definition. Yet only 39% of healthcare employees with disabilities disclose to a manager and just 24% tell their teams because many fear pity, assumptions about their capabilities, or career-limiting reactions. On the patient side, CDC data shows one in four adults with disabilities go without treatment because of cost, and one in five haven’t seen a doctor in the past year.
A JAMA study found that roughly 3% of physicians have a disability, most commonly chronic health conditions, followed by mobility impairments and psychological conditions. Accessible workstations, scheduling flexibility, clear accommodation paths, and disability-informed hiring practices help determine whether those clinicians succeed once placed. Facilities and agencies that miss these needs risk losing qualified providers before the work begins.
How Value-Based Payment Models Are Reshaping Physician Practices, and What Comes Next
July 8, 2026 | Medical Economics
Physician reimbursement is being reshaped around quality, outcomes, and care coordination rather than service volume, requiring practices to invest more heavily in documentation, compliance, technology, and staff training. Those operational demands arrive as practices continue facing reimbursement pressure and rising administrative challenges, forcing many organizations to rethink how they deliver care and support clinicians.
Staffing decisions increasingly influence quality performance as well as patient access. Missing providers, inconsistent charting, and fragmented care teams can affect reimbursement as organizations adapt to value-based care. Locum tenens staffing firms that place clinicians who understand documentation requirements and value-based care workflows are better positioned to support clients navigating these changing payment models.
