Editor’s Note
Burnout and retention pressures are no longer isolated workforce challenges. They are increasingly shaping healthcare organizations’ operational stability and financial performance. As new research shows burnout driving higher costs, reduced capacity, and declining care quality, many systems are recognizing that traditional staffing models are no longer sufficient for the realities of 2026.
This issue of Locums Digest focuses on how healthcare leaders are responding with a more integrated approach. CHG Healthcare’s newly released Physician Alignment, Engagement, and Retention Roadmap highlights growing investment in engagement and retention as core business strategies. At the same time, coverage across this issue shows locum tenens moving further into long-term workforce planning, not as a backup, but as a stabilizing force alongside retention efforts.
What’s emerging is a blended strategy. Health systems are pairing proactive retention initiatives with flexible staffing models that help absorb turnover, protect access, and adapt to changing employee expectations. Locum tenens, workforce analytics, and interim coverage are increasingly working in tandem, not in isolation. With workforce instability persisting, success will depend less on filling individual vacancies and more on designing staffing models that anticipate change, support clinicians, and maintain continuity in a constrained market.
— The Locumpedia Editorial Team
CHG Healthcare Launches Physician Engagement Roadmap to Address Retention Crisis
January 15 | CHG Healthcare
CHG Healthcare has released its Physician Alignment, Engagement, and Retention Roadmap, a new resource aimed at helping healthcare leaders address rising burnout, turnover, and workforce instability. The roadmap responds to persistent provider shortages that continue to disrupt care delivery, strain clinical teams, and increase financial risk for health systems. CHG positions retention as a strategic priority, noting that staff departures affect revenue, continuity of care, and organizational stability.
The roadmap offers practical, data-informed strategies to strengthen clinician engagement and alignment, including improved onboarding, leadership development, cultural assessment tools, and approaches to supporting work-life balance. It also addresses generational shifts in employee expectations and the operational inefficiencies that often contribute to disengagement. CHG emphasizes that better alignment between doctors and organizational values can improve retention while supporting more sustainable care environments.
The release reflects a broader industry shift toward treating retention as a core business risk rather than a human resources issue. As recruiting timelines lengthen and work stress persists, healthcare leaders are increasingly focused on proactive engagement and relationship-building strategies to stabilize their workforce and protect long-term performance.
La Vida Locum
Locum Tenens Isn’t Plan B Anymore
January 13 | Floyd Lee Locums
Why locums is becoming a core staffing strategy:
Locum tenens is turning into a permanent fixture in healthcare workforce planning, not a last-minute fix. Floyd Lee Locums points to elevated provider burnout, ongoing physician shortages, and tighter hospital budgets as forces pushing facilities toward more flexible staffing models. Citing Staffing Industry Analysts data, it notes that locum tenens remains one of the few healthcare staffing segments still growing, with market size projected to reach $9.6 billion in 2025, even as other staffing categories slow.
What this signals for workforce planning:
This reflects a broader industry shift toward using locums as a proactive planning and risk-management tool. Facilities are increasingly relying on locums to protect revenue, manage vacancies, and support growth without adding permanent headcount. The trend is especially pronounced in rural and underserved markets, signaling that long-term locum strategies are becoming essential as staffing pressures continue into 2026.
How Locums Can Stabilize Workforces Among Staffing Shortages
January 16 | Era Locums
What staffing shortages are really affecting:
They’re creating cascading effects that go well beyond unfilled shifts. Understaffing is tied to increased patient safety risks, higher burnout and turnover, service reductions, and rising costs, particularly in rural and underserved communities. Less visible impacts include delayed preventive care, erosion of patient trust, and widening health inequities as access becomes less reliable. With clinician shortages projected to persist, these pressures continue to strain both patient outcomes and system performance.
What it means for healthcare leaders:
Locum tenens is a stabilizing tool in an increasingly constrained labor market. Strategic locum partnerships can help preserve access, reduce pressure on permanent staff, and maintain continuity during prolonged vacancies. For workforce leaders, the takeaway is that locums are most effective when used proactively, not just to fill shifts, but to support resilience, protect care quality, and prevent the downstream effects of chronic understaffing.
How a Locum Tenens Physician Strategy Improves Care and Protects Margins
January 21 | Advisory Board
Why deployment matters more than usage:
While 64% of health systems use locum tenens, many leave value on the table by treating them as short-term fixes. The article emphasizes that revenue loss is usually tied to delayed payer enrollment, slow credentialing, and poor integration, not locums themselves. When deployed strategically, locums can stabilize clinical teams and protect margins during vacancies and transitions.
What this means for health system strategy:
The piece echoes the shift toward proactive locum planning, including early credentialing, parallel payer enrollment, and treating locums as full clinical contributors. Health systems using this approach are better positioned to avoid billing gaps, maintain service lines, and even support growth initiatives. Locums function best when embedded in long-term workforce and revenue planning, not activated after disruption occurs.
Locum Leaders
- Wapiti Medical Staffing celebrates 30 years of rural healthcare partnerships.
- Medicus Healthcare Solutions celebrates 22 years of healthcare staffing.
- The 2026 NALTO/NAPR Annual Convention kicks off on February 4 in Las Vegas, bringing together locum tenens leaders from across the country.
- Tandym Group invests in AAPPR Management Certification to boost locum tenens expertise.
- SIA honors Aya Healthcare founder Alan Braynin in memoriam with induction into the Staffing 100 North America Hall of Fame.
Hire Power
4 Proven Approaches to Building a Sustainable Clinical Workforce
January 16 | Medicus Healthcare Solutions
What health systems are focusing on:
At a Medicus-hosted session during Becker’s CEO + CFO Roundtable, leaders from BJC Medical Group and RWJBarnabas Health outlined four approaches they say are helping stabilize hospital workforces amid ongoing shortages. Their strategies center on investing in physician retention, establishing service line structures, strengthening academic partnerships, and using interim staffing partnerships to maintain access during transitions. Both leaders emphasized that recruiting alone cannot keep pace with demand and that workforce sustainability requires system-level planning.
What this means for workforce strategy:
The discussion reflects a broader shift toward combining long-term workforce investments with flexible coverage solutions. Retention, service lines, and academic partnerships create stability over time, but defined locum and transition staffing remain critical for protecting access and relieving pressure on existing teams. Sustainable workforce models increasingly blend structural planning with temporary staffing to manage today’s gaps while preparing for future demand.
Rethinking Workforce Strategy for a More Resilient Future
January 14 | Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
What leaders are seeing on the ground:
In a Becker’s Healthcare podcast, workforce leaders from Bon Secours Mercy Health and Genovis Health described mounting pressures reshaping workforce strategy, including persistently high patient acuity, sustained volumes, financial constraints, and clinician burnout. They noted that these pressures vary widely by market and care setting, requiring workforce models that combine system-level structure with local flexibility. Internal float pools, redesigned care delivery models, and strategic use of contingent labor were highlighted as ways to maintain coverage while better supporting clinicians.
What it signals for workforce planning:
The discussion reflects a broader shift toward collaborative, data-informed workforce design that blends employed staff, internal mobility, and external partners into a unified care model. They emphasized aligning clinical and business leadership, reducing administrative burden on frontline managers, and using workforce data to anticipate demand. Resilience increasingly depends on flexible staffing structures, trusted partnerships, and proactive planning to sustain care delivery into 2026.
Healthcare Burnout and Retention: Risks That Won’t Ease
January 21 | Cross Country
Why burnout is becoming a structural problem:
Cross Country’s 2026 Healthcare Workforce Outlook shows work-related stress and attrition intensifying rather than stabilizing, with 70% of healthcare leaders citing them as top workforce challenges. The article frames stress as a signal of misaligned staffing models instead of a temporary disruption. Rigid schedules, fluctuating patient demand, talent shortages, and rising labor costs are combining to keep teams operating at sustained capacity, accelerating fatigue and turnover across clinical and non-clinical roles.
What this means for workforce strategy:
The findings link burnout directly to operational and financial performance, with leaders warning of higher costs, reduced capacity, and declining care quality if issues persist. In response, organizations are increasingly prioritizing flexible and contingent labor, workforce analytics, and internal float pools. However, execution lags, with fewer than 60% of leaders feeling prepared for future workforce demands. Addressing these challenges requires redesigning workforce strategies around flexibility, data, and real-time demand rather than reactive staffing adjustments.
Making the Rounds
1 in 3 NPs and PAs Switch Specialties at Least Once in Their Career
January 12 | American Medical Association
What the data shows:
New AMA survey data finds that more than one-third of nurse practitioners and physician assistants change specialties at least once during their careers, often without pursuing formal specialty training. While most NPs and PAs are educated in primary care, many move into areas such as emergency medicine, dermatology, or cardiology, relying largely on on-the-job training. The surveys show strong dependence on physicians for mentorship and clinical guidance during these transitions, even as formal residency or specialty certification remains uncommon.
Why it matters for workforce and care models:
The findings land amid continued debate over scope-of-practice expansion. They highlight the growing disconnect between workforce flexibility and clinical preparation, particularly as APPs move into complex specialties. While specialty mobility among APPs is now common, team-based models remain central to maintaining care quality and patient safety as roles evolve and staffing pressures intensify.
Will AI Replace Primary Care Providers?
January 15 | KevinMD
Why AI is raising questions for primary care:
Advances in AI, combined with growing patient self-monitoring and declining reimbursement, pose a serious threat to the traditional primary care model. It suggests that many core primary care functions, including chronic disease monitoring, preventive care, and basic diagnostics, are increasingly within reach of algorithms and consumer-facing AI tools. As patients gain access to more data, testing, and decision support, routine primary care encounters may be bypassed altogether.
What this could mean for workforce models:
The piece highlights potential downstream effects, including expanded roles for NPs and PAs using AI-enabled tools, with fewer cases routed through physicians. Systemic change isn’t right around the corner, but reimbursement pressure and burnout are converging in ways that could fundamentally reshape primary care staffing. How systems adapt their workforce models will influence whether primary care evolves, contracts, or is displaced in the years ahead.
