Locum Tenens Can Fill the Gap. What’s the Plan for the Rest of Your Workforce?

A physician vacancy opens up. You bring in a locum tenens provider to maintain coverage. Problem solved, right?

For that position, absolutely. But what happens when patient volumes increase, the nursing team needs additional support, or an allied health vacancy starts affecting appointment availability?

Healthcare workforce needs rarely arrive one at a time. And with the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) projecting a shortage of up to 86,000 physicians by 2036, finding qualified provider talent will remain an important part of workforce planning.

Locum tenens can help healthcare organizations maintain physician and advanced practice provider (APP) coverage when they need it most. But keeping care moving takes an entire team, and those staffing needs can shift just as quickly.

That’s why healthcare leaders benefit from looking at the full picture: which roles need support, which staffing models make sense, and how different workforce solutions can work together. Having access to expertise across those needs can make the process a whole lot easier.

Where Does Locum Tenens Fit Into a Flexible Healthcare Workforce?

Locum tenens staffing connects healthcare organizations with qualified physicians and APPs for temporary assignments. It offers a practical way to maintain provider coverage while permanent recruitment continues or when staffing needs shift.

Locum tenens can help organizations:

• Cover physician or APP vacancies during permanent recruitment
• Manage extended provider leaves
• Respond to seasonal or unexpected increases in patient demand
• Maintain specialty coverage during provider transitions
• Support service expansions while evaluating long-term hiring needs

For healthcare leaders, locum tenens providers deliver immediate flexibility when coverage can’t wait for a permanent hire.

And while filling that provider gap is an important step, it’s worth looking at what happens across the rest of the care team.

Why Does Workforce Flexibility Extend Beyond Locum Tenens?

Imagine an outpatient clinic brings in a locum tenens physician to maintain appointment availability. Great news for patients who need care. But what if the nursing team is already stretched thin? Or diagnostic services are struggling to keep up with demand?

Adding provider capacity can put additional pressure on other departments if staffing needs aren’t considered together.

That’s why healthcare workforce planning works best when leaders look beyond individual vacancies and consider how staffing decisions affect the entire care team.

“One of the biggest opportunities in healthcare workforce planning is getting ahead of staffing needs instead of constantly reacting to vacancies. When you’re looking at the full picture—from provider coverage to nursing, allied health, and the teams supporting patients behind the scenes—you start to see where a variety of staffing solutions can make a difference. At Medix, we’re proud to support clients across that spectrum of skill sets. It gives us the flexibility to help organizations address what’s happening today while planning for what’s coming next.”

–Lina Gallato, Founder, LDG Connect

Different workforce needs call for different solutions. Locum tenens can provide temporary physician or APP coverage, contract staffing can help teams respond to changing workloads, and direct hire can support long-term workforce stability.

For healthcare leaders, the advantage is having access to those options without starting from scratch every time a new staffing need emerges. With expertise across healthcare specialties and hiring models, Medix helps organizations connect the dots between immediate coverage needs and broader workforce priorities. That means looking at the full picture and identifying solutions that make sense for each organization.

How Do You Choose the Right Healthcare Staffing Model?

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to healthcare staffing. The right model depends on the role, how quickly talent is needed, how long the need is expected to last, and what the organization hopes to accomplish.

Sometimes, the best solution also creates opportunities beyond the immediate staffing need.

Take a West Coast medical center struggling to recruit experienced behavioral health nurses. Through a Medix contract-to-hire nursing partnership, the organization brought on 15 behavioral health registered nurses, with six eventually transitioning into full-time roles.

The model helped the medical center fill immediate openings while building a stronger foundation for its permanent nursing workforce.

The right balance of direct hire and contingent staffing can help organizations address immediate workforce needs while building toward long-term hiring goals.

What Scheduling Practices Can Help Healthcare Organizations Optimize Existing Staff?

Innovative healthcare scheduling practices, such as demand-based scheduling, flexible shifts, cross-training, and coordinated care team schedules, can help organizations optimize existing staff resources and identify where additional coverage is needed.

Even a fully staffed department can experience coverage challenges when schedules don’t align with patient demand, provider availability, or the workloads of other care teams. Before adding headcount, it’s worth looking at how existing talent is being utilized.

Here are five ways healthcare organizations can make their schedules work smarter:

• Demand-based scheduling: Use historical patient volumes, appointment patterns, and seasonal trends to align staffing levels with anticipated demand
• Flexible shift arrangements: Explore staggered start times, alternative shift lengths, and voluntary scheduling options to better accommodate coverage needs and employee preferences
• Cross-training and float pools: Prepare qualified professionals to support multiple departments or locations when demand shifts, while respecting licensing, competencies, and scope-of-practice requirements
• Coordinated care team scheduling: Align physician and APP availability with nursing, allied health, and other support teams to help prevent bottlenecks in patient care
• Proactive coverage planning: Identify anticipated leaves, vacancies, and periods of increased demand early enough to adjust schedules or secure temporary support

For example, adjusting nursing shifts might address a recurring afternoon coverage gap, while a planned physician leave may require locum tenens support to maintain appointment availability. Other situations may call for temporary allied health talent or permanent hiring.

The goal is to make the most of existing resources while recognizing when additional staffing support can help maintain manageable workloads and continuity of care.

How Can Flexible Staffing Help Healthcare Organizations Manage Labor Costs?

When healthcare leaders evaluate staffing expenses, it’s easy to focus on hourly rates and salaries. But the cost of an open position can show up in plenty of other places.

Think overtime, recruitment expenses, credentialing, onboarding, and the impact of turnover. A physician vacancy may limit appointment availability, while a nursing shortage can leave existing employees covering additional shifts.

Flexible staffing gives organizations more ways to manage those pressures.

Locum tenens can help maintain provider coverage during recruitment. Contract nursing and allied health professionals can provide support when patient volumes rise. And direct hire healthcare staffing can help organizations build permanent teams for the long haul.

Of course, every staffing model comes with its own financial considerations. Assignment duration, staffing rates, patient demand, reimbursement, and the cost of leaving a position unfilled can all influence the bottom line.

Looking at those factors together helps healthcare leaders make more informed decisions about where to invest their workforce dollars.

How Can Healthcare Leaders Evaluate Flexible Staffing ROI?

The return on investment (ROI) of flexible healthcare staffing depends on more than the cost of bringing in additional talent. Healthcare leaders also need to consider what appropriate staffing makes possible for their organization.

Some important factors include:

• Total staffing expenses: Contract rates, recruitment fees, credentialing, onboarding, and employment costs
• Vacancy impact: Overtime, appointment availability, delayed services, and productivity challenges
• Workforce stability: Employee workloads, turnover, retention, and contract-to-hire conversions
• Operational performance: Time-to-fill, scheduling coverage, service continuity, and departmental efficiency
• Long-term workforce planning: Whether temporary coverage, permanent hiring, or a combination provides the most sustainable solution

There’s no universal answer because every healthcare organization operates differently. Maintaining physician coverage in a busy outpatient clinic presents different financial considerations than expanding a care management team across multiple service areas.

Working with a staffing partner who understands more than one specialty or hiring model can help organizations evaluate these decisions in context. Some coverage challenges may be addressed through scheduling adjustments, while others require locum tenens, contract talent, or permanent hiring.

With experience spanning provider staffing, nursing, allied health, care management, and other healthcare workforce needs, Medix helps clients evaluate staffing options alongside their operational priorities and budgets. That broader perspective can be especially valuable when workforce needs overlap across departments.

What Makes a Flexible Healthcare Staffing Strategy Successful?

A flexible workforce doesn’t happen by accident. It takes planning, coordination, and a willingness to adjust when circumstances change.

Here are five ways healthcare leaders can build more adaptable staffing strategies:

1. Plan around demand, not just vacancies. Review patient volumes, scheduling patterns, turnover, anticipated leaves, and planned service expansions. Understanding when and where care teams need support can help leaders make better use of existing resources and anticipate when additional talent may be necessary.
2. Coordinate staffing across the care team. Consider how provider schedules affect nursing, allied health, care management, and other departments. When staffing decisions are made with the broader care team in mind, organizations can better align coverage with patient needs and reduce avoidable scheduling bottlenecks.
3. Make compliance part of the plan. Licensing, credentialing, background checks, and facility-specific onboarding requirements all take time. Building those timelines into workforce planning helps organizations set realistic expectations for when talent can begin working. Working with an experienced, Joint Commission-certified healthcare staffing partner like Medix can provide additional confidence in the processes supporting clinical talent placements.
4. Keep your existing team in mind. Staffing levels and scheduling demands affect employee workloads and retention. Temporary support, sustainable schedules, and permanent hiring opportunities can all play a role in building a workforce people want to stay with.
5. Stay ready to adjust. Monitor fill rates, assignment performance, labor expenses, and changing operational demands. The staffing strategy that works today may need a few adjustments six months from now.

We’ve seen how important that adaptability can be.

The partnership demonstrates how a flexible staffing approach can grow alongside an organization’s needs. 

For a closer look at aligning different hiring models with workforce priorities, explore our healthcare staffing strategy guide.

Build a Flexible Healthcare Workforce with Medix

Locum tenens can help fill an important gap. But when the next workforce challenge comes along, having access to the right staffing expertise can make all the difference.

Medix supports healthcare organizations across the continuum of care, from locum tenens and direct hire for physicians and APPs to nursing, allied health, care management, revenue cycle, and other healthcare staffing solutions.

With specialized recruiting expertise across multiple disciplines and hiring models, we help organizations navigate changing workforce demands while keeping their operational priorities and long-term goals in focus.

What’s your plan for the rest of your workforce?

Let’s talk about how Medix can support your healthcare team