Locums Isn’t Temporary Anymore – It’s a Career Strategy
For years, locum tenens has been treated as a temporary solution, used to hold things together until a more ‘permanent’ solution/provider arrives. What’s changed isn’t just the size of the market, it’s how locums is actually being used. In 2025 it was supposed to be an almost $10 billion industry with even more growth in 2026 expected. Further to that, locum tenens remains the only segment with consistent growth, even when other staffing areas flatten out¹. The primary drivers of growth are steady bill rates, increasing patient volumes, demographic trends, increased incidence of chronic disease, the need for revenue-generating roles, and a host of other factors.
What’s Changed Isn’t the Market — It’s the Model
So why is it that we struggle to come across more facilities willing to use locum tenens as a way to fill in provider gaps? Why would a facility be willing to let their ER department go into ‘diversion’ because they didn’t want a provider who did locums? Yes, that did happen.
Why Many Facilities Still Resist Locums
We’ve heard all the ‘reasons’ for not using locums:
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- Too expensive
- Locums doesn’t commit/they don’t care
- Credentialing takes too long
- Continuity of Care Suffers
- They don’t know our systems
- We’ve been Burned before
At face value, these sound like valid concerns. In practice, most of them point to the same underlying issue: unpredictability and lack of trust, not the locum model itself.
The Cost Conversation Is Often Incomplete
One of the clearest examples of this disconnect shows up in how cost is evaluated. Locums is often judged on hourly rate alone, without accounting for the full cost of permanent staffing which includes recruitment fees, onboarding time, credentialing, benefits, payroll taxes, coverage gaps, turnover, and lost productivity. When those factors are considered, locums frequently looks far more viable than the surface-level numbers suggest.
We recognize that locums is not always going to be the best fit for every single facility. That said, don’t let these age-old ‘reasons’ hold you or your facility back from giving a locums provider a chance. Almost every facility we’ve spoken to that’s told us the above reasons, we’ve been able to calm their concerns and build relationships that matter.
Providers Have Already Made the Shift
Providers are no longer viewing locums as a bridge to retirement. Increasingly, they’re treating it as a sustainable work model. They’re also seeing first-hand that health systems are having to rely on locum providers – 25% more so than originally forecasted². This is a direct signal that temporary staffing is no longer patch work, it’s planned. The good news is that facilities are finally starting to incorporate locums more purposefully into business strategies. 80% of facilities expect usage to remain flat or grow usage.
Facilities are also moving beyond single backfills for locums – declining from 82% in 2023 to 67% in 2024 (ref: same as before) which shows a diversification of use cases (covering PTO, maternity/paternity leaves, transitions, service line testing, etc.).
We can see by the data facilities are shifting, they have to. Some may not realize it but the challenges they’re facing won’t be going away any time soon and locum tenens is a great alternative to keep your facility humming.
What about providers? What kind of behavioral changes do we see among them that would indicate a change?
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- Experience with locums is broadening³: Industry surveys suggest a strong majority of locum physicians intend to continue locum work long-term
- Starting locum careers sooner*: Data is showing that providers are starting locums earlier in their careers and fewer enter it only in late career retirement – compare that to 10+ years ago, which indicates a genuine shift in how locums is perceived as a work model
- Satisfaction while working locum assignments is changing significantly*: In 2024, nearly half of all providers doing locums found it more satisfying than perm work. Compare that to 16% in 2016, that’s a significant shift in behavior.
Providers are wanting more control and we’re currently wading through those waters as the pendulum shifts. Facilities have held leverage but it’s dissipating as all of these factors continue to squeeze coverage more than it ever has before. They’re tired of burnout and not just from workload, but from friction, instability, and lack of control.
What Happens If We Don’t Adapt
While facilities ultimately hold the decision-making power, we have to look at this as a broader population to determine how we solve for our constant provider shortages. How long are we going to let rural facilities sit empty because we don’t have the ‘permanent’ providers in place? Would you want to live in an area that didn’t have proper physician coverage? These are questions we’re not asking ourselves but should be.
The question isn’t whether locum tenens works, we think the data already answers that. The real question is whether healthcare systems are willing to evolve how they think about workforce strategy before access gaps widen even further. At Treehouse, we see this shift every day and not as a trend, but as a necessity.
If you’re ready to have an actual conversation about your locums career, or your facility’s staffing needs, we’re here.
📞 Give us a call at Treehouse.
Let’s talk.
¹https://medicushcs.com/resources/healthcare-market-report-q3-2025
²https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251029104102/en/Report-Locum-Tenens-Usage-Jumps-25-as-Health-Systems-Combat-Physician-Shortages-and-%242.6M-Revenue-Gaps
³https://www.locumpedia.com/news/locums-digest-100
*https://www.amnhealthcare.com/siteassets/amn-insights/physician/amnlocums2024surveyproviders1.pdf
