What Is a Locum Tenens Physician? (And Why the Model Is Broken)

If you search "locum tenens physician" right now, you'll find agency landing pages promising freedom and flexibility. What you won't find is the fine print: 30-50% agency markups baked into your daily rate, 90-180 days of credentialing delays before your first shift, and a recruiter who works for the agency — not for you.

This article explains what locum tenens actually is, how the model works, and why a growing number of physicians are finding a better path.

What "Locum Tenens" Means

Locum tenens is Latin for "to hold the place." In medicine, it refers to physicians who work on a temporary or contract basis — filling coverage gaps at hospitals, clinics, and physician groups that need short-term staffing. The model dates to the 1970s, when rural hospitals began struggling to keep permanent staff.

Today, the locum tenens market is worth over $5 billion annually. More than 48,000 physicians work locum assignments in a given year. It's one of the fastest-growing segments of healthcare staffing.

How the Traditional Model Works (And Who Profits)

Most locum tenens work runs through staffing agencies. Here's the standard flow:

1. A hospital has a coverage gap (a physician leaves, census spikes, vacation coverage is needed).
2. The hospital calls a staffing agency — CompHealth, AMN Healthcare, Weatherby, Jackson & Coker, or one of dozens of others.
3. The agency recruits a physician to fill the slot, handles paperwork, and places the physician.
4. The agency bills the hospital $250–$350/hour for the physician's time. The physician receives $150–$200/hour.

The difference — often $50–$100 per hour, sometimes more — flows to the agency.

The agency captures value at both ends: it charges the hospital a markup and pays the physician less than market rate. Neither side knows exactly what the other is paying.

The Credentialing Problem Nobody Talks About

The biggest problem in locum tenens isn't the pay cut. It's the time it takes to start working.

Every new hospital assignment requires credentialing — a process where the facility verifies your training, licensure, board certification, malpractice history, and references. This process takes 90 to 180 days at most institutions. That's 3 to 6 months before your first shift.

If you want to work at three different hospital systems, you credential at each one separately. The same documents — your CV, diplomas, DEA certificate, licenses — get re-verified from scratch, every time.

For a physician earning $300,000 annually from locum work, a 90-day credentialing delay costs approximately $75,000 in lost income.

The SANNEXUS Difference: A National Physician Credentialing Passport

SANNEXUS was built to solve this. Our flagship product is a national physician credentialing passport — a verified, portable digital file that holds everything a hospital credentialing office needs to verify in one place.

Instead of credentialing from scratch at every new facility, SANNEXUS physicians credential once. Their passport is continuously verified and updated. When a new hospital opportunity comes up, the passport transfers — and typical time-to-first-clinical-shift drops from 90–180 days to 1–2 weeks.

It's the difference between a slow, paper-based process that exists to serve the agency and a modern, physician-first infrastructure that serves you.

What Locum Physicians Actually Want

A 2024 survey of locum tenens physicians found the top complaints:

1. Credentialing delays prevent them from taking assignments on short notice
2. Lack of transparency in agency compensation structures
3. Difficulty managing paperwork across multiple facilities
4. No ability to compare facilities, rates, or working conditions before accepting an assignment

SANNEXUS addresses all four. Our marketplace shows verified shift rates before you commit. Our credentialing passport eliminates the paperwork cycle. Our facility rating system lets physicians review hospitals the way physicians review them on Doximity — with real data, not sales pitches.

Should You Work Locum Tenens?

Locum tenens is the right model for many physicians. If you value flexibility, want to control your schedule, or are between permanent positions, locum work can be excellent. The freedom is real.

The question isn't whether to work locum tenens. The question is whether to do it through an agency that extracts a cut of every shift — or through a platform built to return value to the physician.

You trained for over a decade. You passed your boards. You earned your DEA registration and state licenses. Your credentialing file represents years of work. That should be yours to carry — not locked in an agency's CRM.

SANNEXUS is free to browse. Create your physician passport, see available shifts in Florida, and compare what a platform-first model looks like against the agency model you've been living with.

Create your SANNEXUS passport →

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SANNEXUS is an AI-native physician placement and credentialing platform headquartered in Florida. We are not a locum tenens agency. We are the infrastructure that makes physician mobility faster, more transparent, and more profitable for physicians.