Editor’s Note
Clinical staffing challenges aren’t easing evenly, and healthcare organizations are responding with a wider range of workforce strategies. CHG Healthcare’s acquisition of KREWE Anesthesia adds specialized CRNA recruiting and managed anesthesia services at a time when those clinicians remain among the hardest advanced practice providers to recruit. Elsewhere, APPs remain an important part of workforce planning, while expanding practice authority for certified anesthesiologist assistants is giving more facilities another option for anesthesia coverage.
Recruiting clinicians can be difficult, and so can keeping the people already on staff. Physician vacancies can leave existing teams carrying heavier workloads for months, while stronger workplace connections have been associated with lower burnout and less intent to leave. Locum tenens coverage can help relieve some of that pressure by protecting time off and providing support while searches for permanent providers continue.
Staffing strategies have to account for more than filling open positions. Recruiting, retention, onboarding, and temporary coverage can all help facilities maintain services as demand shifts and vacancies persist. This edition of Locums Digest explores how organizations are approaching those issues while building and supporting their clinical teams.
– The Locumpedia Editorial Team
Lead Story
CHG Healthcare Acquires KREWE Anesthesia to Expand CRNA Staffing Capabilities, Meeting Rising Client Needs
August 11, 2026 | CHG Healthcare
CHG Healthcare acquired KREWE Anesthesia, a CRNA-founded staffing firm that provides locum tenens placements, workforce management, and customized anesthesia coverage for hospitals and health systems, expanding its own anesthesia staffing capabilities in the process. KREWE will remain under founders Gavin Baker, CEO, and Chase Chiasson, President, while continuing to operate as its own brand. The company reports roughly 84% annual clinician retention.
The deal gives CHG a specialty operation built around one of the tighter corners of the clinical labor market. CHG’s research identifies certified registered nurse anesthetists as one of the hardest advanced practice roles to recruit, with the shortage especially acute in rural communities that depend heavily on CRNA-led anesthesia coverage. KREWE also expands CHG beyond individual placements into ongoing program-level anesthesia support, giving health systems another option for managing persistent gaps across surgical services.
The acquisition sends a clear signal to locum tenens agencies competing in this space. Specialty depth and managed workforce capabilities are becoming more valuable where clinician scarcity directly limits operating room capacity. Broad staffing scale still counts, but healthcare employers facing hard-to-fill anesthesia needs may place more weight on firms that bring specialized recruiting, scheduling, credentialing, and clinician support together under one program.
La Vida Locum
The Growing Demand for Pulmonologists
August 6, 2026 | Jackson and Coker Locum Tenens
Pulmonology remains a pressure point in 2026, with hospitals contending with physician shortages, pulmonary and critical care staffing gaps, and rising respiratory care demand. With roughly 13,550 active patient care pulmonologists nationwide, the specialty is under some of the sharpest recruiting strain in medicine, particularly where pulmonary and intensive care responsibilities overlap. That combination keeps experienced pulmonologists valuable across both inpatient and specialty settings.
A single vacancy can touch clinic schedules, inpatient consults, and critical care capacity at the same time, raising the stakes for coverage planning. Locum tenens gives employers a bridge while longer physician searches move forward, especially where specialty supply is thin. Recruiters who plainly define workload, call, ICU responsibilities, and support before an assignment starts put facilities in a stronger position to fill these roles with a physician who can realistically sustain them.
How Locum Tenens Can Help Reduce Physician Burnout: A Guide for Healthcare Leaders
July 30, 2026 | Medicus Healthcare Solutions
Burnout remains widespread among physicians, with 41.9% reporting at least one symptom in the most recent National Physician Comparison Report from the American Medical Association. Nine specialties, including emergency medicine and urological surgery, run above that average. Vacancies compound the problem, since filling an open physician position now takes an average of 224 days, according to a 2025 benchmarking report from the Association for Advancing Physician and Provider Recruitment. Physicians still on staff absorb the difference in the meantime, taking on extra shifts, heavier patient loads, and more frequent call.
Locum tenens offers healthcare leaders a way to get ahead of that strain rather than just responding to it, especially around planned absences like vacations, parental leave, and medical leave. This flexibility can also pay off when patient volumes spike unexpectedly, since an established relationship lets organizations add capacity quickly instead of waiting until demand has already outpaced the team. A 2026 Medscape survey found nearly six in ten physicians would accept lower pay for better work-life balance, which makes protecting time off just as important to retention as filling the shift itself.
The First 48 Hours: Setting Temporary Providers Up for Success
August 11, 2026 | ConnectHealth
A temporary clinician’s first two days can present small, avoidable challenges. Having system access, a reviewed schedule, and a short list of key contacts ready before the first shift heads off most of those early problems. A brief walkthrough and one point person for questions keep setup from cutting into clinical time.
It’s the kind of preparation that carries direct value in locum tenens, where assignments often require providers to become productive quickly inside unfamiliar systems. Facilities that standardize first-day onboarding can reduce repeated questions and workflow delays, while agencies benefit when placements start with fewer operational surprises. Credentialing gets a provider through the door, but local access and workflow preparation determine how fast that person can actually get to work.
Locum Leaders
- CHG Healthcare landed a spot on PEOPLE’s 100 Companies That Care list for 2026, a recognition from PEOPLE magazine and Great Place To Work based on employee feedback.
- Pacific Companies was named to the 2026 Inc. 5000, ranking No. 2,805 nationally with 112% growth over the past three years, marking its ninth consecutive appearance on the list.
- MPLT Healthcare was recognized among the South Florida Business Journal’s 2026 Top Temporary Personnel Agencies, reinforcing its position as one of the region’s leading staffing firms.
Hire Power
Healthcare Staffing Returns to Modest Growth Across Most Segments
August 12, 2026 | Staffing Industry Analysts
Revenue grew 2% year over year for locum tenens in June. Locum staffing firms also reported the lowest recruiting difficulty of any segment measured, at 3.17 on a five-point scale, a sign that supply pressure is easing even as revenue growth stays measured. Sales difficulty for the segment averaged 3.08 on the same scale, nearly matching the recruiting figure and pointing to friction on both the client and candidate side of the business.
Agencies should read that combination as a call for precision, not indiscriminate expansion. Specialty, care setting, clinician supply, and client economics are separating stronger opportunities from slower ones, while rising clinician pay can still squeeze spreads when bill rates don’t keep pace. Firms with disciplined recruiting and visibility into margin, fill speed, and local demand are better positioned to act on what the data shows.
Survey: 92% of Healthcare Leaders Now Call APPs Essential to Staffing
August 5, 2026 | Medical Economics
Advanced practice providers have moved into the core workforce plan. According to a survey of 327 healthcare facility leaders, 92% rated APPs very or extremely important to workforce strategy, up from 89% a year earlier, and just 1% expected to reduce APP use in 2026. CRNAs were the hardest APP role to fill nationally, cited by 30% of respondents.
Rural facilities reported the greatest CRNA recruiting difficulty at 49%, yet 25% planned to reduce APP locum use in 2026, while urban facilities moved the opposite direction, with more planning to increase it than cut it. Employers balancing budget pressure against anesthesia capacity will have to make those tradeoffs explicitly. Locum agencies serving APPs can expect demand to stay highly dependent on specialty and market rather than move in one direction everywhere.
How CAAs Are Changing Anesthesia
August 11, 2026 | LocumTenens.com
Anesthesia staffing models are adding another lever. Certified anesthesiologist assistants work within physician-led anesthesia teams, and expanding practice authority is giving more facilities access to the role as they contend with a projected shortage of about 6,300 anesthesiologists by 2036. Recent legislative movement in Tennessee and Virginia has widened the states where CAAs can practice.
More care-team options mean more ways to design coverage, but the model still depends on state rules and the structure of the anesthesia team. Health systems can evaluate CAAs alongside anesthesiologists and CRNAs when planning surgical capacity rather than treating every vacancy as a one-for-one replacement. Locum staffing firms with anesthesia expertise will need to understand these team configurations as facilities look for adaptable coverage across multiple clinician roles.
Making the Rounds
Earlier Lifeline for Rural Hospitals Faces Test Under ‘Big Beautiful’ Law
August 3, 2026 | KFF Health News
Sturgis Hospital in Michigan closed in June after becoming one of the early adopters of the federal Rural Emergency Hospital model. Fifty-six rural hospitals have converted to the model nationwide, according to the Sheps Center, receiving a 5% Medicare payment boost and roughly $3.6 million in annual facility payments in exchange for dropping inpatient beds, though two of those hospitals have since closed and three have changed the services they offer. More than 40% of rural hospitals still lose money, according to the healthcare consulting group Chartis.
Financial instability and workforce shortages remain tightly connected in rural markets. When hospitals reduce services, convert operating models, or close, staffing demand can shift quickly across emergency medicine, primary care, surgery, and visiting specialty coverage. Locum agencies working in rural communities need to watch service-line changes as closely as vacancies, because the underlying question may be whether a service still exists, not simply who will cover it.
Healthcare Job Growth Stays Sluggish in July: 4 Things to Know
August 7, 2026 | Becker’s Hospital Review
Healthcare added 22,000 jobs in July, well below its average monthly gain of 36,000 over the prior 12 months, even as the overall US economy shed 23,000 jobs. Hospitals were essentially flat, losing about 400 positions after adding roughly 9,500 in June. Ambulatory healthcare services generated most of July’s gains with 18,100 new positions, including 4,200 in physician offices.
The sector is still adding jobs even as the wider economy contracts, but the details show why staffing firms can’t treat healthcare as one uniform market. Employment growth is concentrating outside hospitals even while clinical vacancies and specialty shortages persist across the system. That divergence matters for staffing decisions, since slower hospital hiring doesn’t automatically translate into softer demand for temporary physician coverage in ambulatory or specialty settings.
Stronger Belonging May Help Ease Physician Burnout
August 13, 2026 | American Medical Association
An AMA-led study linked stronger organizational belonging with lower physician burnout, fewer plans to reduce clinical hours, and less intent to leave an employer. Nearly two-thirds of participants reported a strong sense of belonging, while nearly four in 10 reported a solid one. Among that first group, four in five said their teammates had their back.
Retention strategy reaches beyond compensation and workload. Locum clinicians enter teams without the history or internal relationships permanent physicians have, which makes clear communication, local support, and inclusion in everyday workflows especially relevant to assignment stability. Facilities and agencies that treat provider integration as part of placement execution can remove avoidable inefficiency while supporting the same teamwork and connection associated with stronger physician retention.
