Editor’s Note
Healthcare organizations continue to face tough financial realities, and this issue of Locums Digest shows just how widespread those pressures have become. Fewer medical groups are reporting revenue gains than they were a year ago, while labor, supply, and operating costs keep climbing. As the gap between revenue and expenses grows, decisions about hiring, staffing, and patient access are becoming more difficult.
Technology presents another challenge. While AI advances, not every facility is equally prepared to take advantage of it. Hospitals with stronger digital infrastructure are better positioned to adopt new tools, while others keep working to build the foundation those systems require.
Across the stories in this edition, one theme keeps emerging: flexibility is crucial. Whether it‘s helping health systems maintain coverage, supporting physicians looking for a more sustainable way to practice, or giving rural facilities another option to preserve access to care, locum tenens continues to play an important role. Together, these stories highlight why adaptable workforce strategies remain essential as the healthcare industry navigates an increasingly complex environment.
– The Locumpedia Editorial Team
Main Story
Revenue Growth Narrows as Costs Climb: The 2026 Squeeze on Medical Practices
July 2, 2026 | Medical Group Management Association
A recent poll found 47% of medical groups reported higher year-to-date revenue than in 2025, down from 56% a year earlier, while 84% said costs had increased, led by labor, supplies, drugs, insurance, and overhead. Groups gaining revenue credited higher patient volume, added providers, payer contract negotiations, and tighter revenue-cycle management, while those losing ground pointed to physician departures, retirements, weaker reimbursement, and patients delaying care. ACA marketplace changes are adding pressure as well, with deductibles rising and more patients shifting toward bronze coverage and higher out-of-pocket costs.
Staffing decisions carry more financial weight when revenue growth is slowing and cost increases are accelerating. An unfilled physician position reduces patient volume while pushing overtime, call coverage, and burnout costs onto the remaining team, compounding the strain practices are already under. Groups that have added providers or tightened revenue-cycle operations are holding steadier, while those absorbing departures and retirements without replacement are feeling the gap most acutely.
Locum tenens coverage can protect service-line revenue during recruitment gaps, extended leave, or turnover, but tighter budgets mean those decisions will face closer scrutiny. Practices need to understand what an uncovered shift actually costs in lost visits, procedures, and downstream income before deciding whether temporary staff pencils out. Agencies that can connect placement costs to preserved access and revenue will be better positioned than those competing on speed or availability alone.
La Vida Locum
Locum Tenens as a Physician Retention Strategy for Health Systems
July 14, 2026 | Jackson and Coker Locum Tenens
Physician retention often breaks down long before someone submits a resignation, and temporary staffing can address the conditions that accelerate departures before they happen. Nearly 42% of doctors reported at least one burnout symptom in 2025, and persistent vacancies force employed doctors to take on more patients, repeat call duties, and postpone time off. Locums can relieve that pressure during parental leave, medical leave, recruitment gaps, or sudden increases in patient volume, protecting the permanent team‘s workload and schedule before stress and fatigue lead to a clinician‘s exit.
Health systems can weigh assignment costs against turnover expenses, lost productivity, service disruption, and the time required to replace a departing physician. By building plans around the permanent team‘s specific pain points, including PTO protection, call frequency, and workload distribution, locum agencies are more likely to provide genuine relief. Fit and execution determine whether temporary staffing actually reduces strain or simply adds a body to an already complicated schedule.
Neonatology by the Numbers: Workforce, Demand, and NICU Capacity
July 16, 2026 | Medicus Healthcare Solutions
The US has more than 5,400 neonatologists, but geographic concentration leaves nonmetro communities significantly exposed, and declining fellowship interest, neonatal nurse practitioner shortages, and obstetric unit closures are narrowing the pipeline further. Uneven access to Level III and Level IV NICUs compounds the problem, particularly in rural and underserved markets where maternity care deserts are already limiting obstetric options. Roughly 15% of neonatologists work locum tenens full-time or alongside permanent employment, a share that reflects both the specialty‘s access gaps and the scheduling flexibility the work allows.
Hospitals need to track leave, recruitment timelines, patient volume, transfer activity, and permanent team workloads before schedules fail rather than after. Staffing firms serving this specialty will need deep pipelines, realistic credentialing plans, and clear visibility into NICU acuity and call expectations. The widest opportunities remain outside major metropolitan markets, where thin specialist supply makes each departure harder to absorb.
How to Use Staffing Data to Make Better Hiring Decisions Year Over Year
July 19, 2026 | ConnectHealth
Useful workforce metrics include cost per hire by unit, agency and internal fill rates, departmental turnover, and total days vacant. A position open for 60 days creates two months of added pressure on the remaining team, an expense that shows up in overtime, burnout, and service disruption before it ever appears in a budget line. Consistent year-over-year tracking helps employers separate recurring problems from isolated events and build hiring calendars before predictable gaps arrive.
Locum spending becomes more useful when facilities can see which service lines depend on it and why. Rising agency use paired with flat internal fill rates may point to a weak pipeline, slow approvals, uncompetitive compensation, or poor retention in feeder roles. Staffing firms that report assignment duration, extension patterns, credentialing timelines, cancellation causes, and recurring specialty gaps give clients a cleaner picture of where temporary support is protecting operations and where structural fixes are overdue.
Locum Leaders
- Knox Lane completed its acquisition of Cross Country Healthcare; as part of the transaction, its portfolio company All Star Healthcare Solutions acquired Cross Country Locums.
- Alumni Healthcare Staffing, Fusion Healthcare Staffing, and Medicus Healthcare Solutions were each named to Staffing Industry Analysts‘ 2026 list of Fastest-Growing US Staffing Firms.
Hire Power
The Fastest Growing Healthcare Jobs in 2026: What Employers Need to Know
July 16, 2026 | MASC Medical Recruitment Firm
Physicians remain central to care delivery, but APPs and other medical professionals are taking larger roles in workforce plans. Aging populations, persistent provider shortages, outpatient expansion, home-based care, telehealth, and AI are driving the shift toward a more distributed clinical model. Healthcare employers now compete for talent across several labor markets simultaneously, each with different supply constraints and recruiting timelines.
Broader hiring demand creates more pressure on the same infrastructure, and facilities may use locum coverage to preserve physician capacity while permanent teams expand in advanced practice or virtual care. Staffing companies should expect clients to ask for more flexible mixes of clinicians rather than isolated requisitions for a single role type. Those that understand service-line goals and team design will add more value than firms filling openings one at a time.
The Discipline Helping Rural Hospitals Survive
July 7, 2026 | Becker’s Hospital Review
Hundreds of rural hospitals face closure risk as Medicaid cuts, reimbursement gaps, and workforce competition put pressure on already narrow margins. Daviess Community Hospital in Indiana changed management partners after a new CEO took over in July 2025, entering an arrangement with Deaconess Health System focused on keeping care local rather than shifting patients to tertiary centers. Within roughly six months, the hospital moved from losing millions of dollars each month to maintaining profitability.
Every vacancy can threaten a service line in a low-volume facility, yet unmanaged temporary labor deepens cost pressure rather than relieving it. Understanding referral retention, patient volume, call obligations, and the revenue tied to each clinician placed is what separates useful coverage partners from those adding cost without stability. Proposals that support local continuity and arrive with disciplined scheduling, credentialing, and cost controls will have greater implications than open-ended requests.
Addressing Healthcare Staffing Challenges Through Internal Leadership Development
July 16, 2026 | GE HealthCare
Nearly half of healthcare organizations report significant difficulty recruiting qualified executive candidates, and the shortage extends into frontline and operational management. External searches have become less predictable and more expensive, while unclear advancement paths can push strong internal employees toward the exit. Structured development programs can build leadership pipelines through defined career paths, coaching, and applied practice, with frontline managers carrying particular weight because they oversee schedules, orientation, and the daily consequences of vacancies.
Stable management infrastructure is what allows locum clinicians to integrate quickly, understand expectations, and reduce disconnect with regular staff. When communication is weak and authority is unclear, an otherwise qualified placement can fall apart before it delivers any real benefit. Developing leaders alongside workforce plans gives facilities more control over retention, contract extensions, and overall placement performance.
Making the Rounds
Docs in Congress Pitch Medicare Overhaul to Bolster Independent Practice, Fight Healthcare Consolidation
July 15, 2026 | Medical Economics
Three physician lawmakers introduced a bill in Congress on July 15 aimed at slowing the shift of doctors into hospital-owned practices. The measure would tie annual physician pay to a government inflation index, add rural-friendly cost adjustments, and launch a five-year pilot that pays primary care groups a monthly per-patient fee on top of standard billing. Nearly 70% of medical practices nationwide are now owned by hospitals or corporations, according to the bill‘s sponsors, and the new pilot payments would go only to independent groups.
For staffing leaders, the eligibility restriction is the detail worth tracking. Quality-related payment penalties would also drop sharply under the proposal, and bonus payments to non-independent providers would be capped at half of available funds, both changes that favor smaller, self-owned practices over larger systems. If the bill gains traction, independent groups could see steadier revenue and more reason to keep expanding their own staff, which may open new coverage gaps that locum providers are well positioned to fill.
Study: Hospitals’ Telehealth Scale Indicates Digital Readiness for AI
July 2, 2026 | TechTarget
A national study of more than 6,100 acute care hospitals found that telehealth scale tracks closely with AI adoption. Fifty-six percent of participants fell into the lowest AI tier, a quarter landed in the middle tier, and 19% reached the top tier, with telehealth volume rising in step with clinical and operational AI scores at each level. Researchers couldn‘t confirm that one technology drives the other, but hospitals that skipped reporting telehealth volume were overwhelmingly clustered in the bottom tier.
The pattern points to infrastructure, not intent, as the real dividing line between healthcare organizations ready for AI and those that aren‘t. Staffing partners should take note: facilities with mature remote-care and data systems are likely easier places to onboard locum clinicians across sites and care models, while those without that foundation may need more hands-on support with orientation, documentation, and scheduling. Rural hospitals showed a notably weaker link between telehealth scale and AI adoption than their metropolitan counterparts, a reminder that digital capability still varies widely by setting.
Health Systems Building AI Agents Must Balance Trust and Token Budgets
July 21, 2026 | Healthcare IT News
Advocate Health and ECU Health are building AI agents inside Epic while confronting clinical trust and unpredictable costs. The former requires human review before any agent takes a clinical action and relies on real-time provider feedback to catch weak outputs, and the system plans AI literacy training for all 162,000 employees. ECU Health found that token costs alone could separate a $100 pilot from a $1 million one, pushing teams to track usage closely and pick projects with clear, measurable value.
AI implementation is becoming a workforce issue. Health systems will need clinicians who can test workflows, flag exceptions, and maintain oversight as automated tools spread across care settings. Locum tenens providers may walk into different agent rules, documentation steps, and approval chains on every assignment. Agencies that capture those expectations early and confirm temporary staff get the same training and access as permanent employees can cut onboarding risk substantially.
