A service line is short two physicians. The employed group can absorb some of it. Per diem covers a few shifts. An agency can fill the rest by next month, at a rate someone will have to justify in the spring.
Many provider staffing decisions look like this — made quickly, under coverage pressure, without a clean way to compare the options on cost, quality and compliance at the same time.
During this panel, a physician enterprise operator, a physician search executive, a locum tenens agency CEO and a healthcare valuation director walk through how each coverage model actually performs, and how to defend the choice when finance asks.
HRSA projects a shortage of roughly 113,000 full-time equivalent physicians by 2028, so these decisions are not going to get less frequent.
Learnings include:
- What employed extra shifts, per diem coverage and contract labor each cost in dollars, access and continuity
- A method for evaluating locum tenens against employed providers on fair market value, commercial reasonableness and business impact
- Competitive strategies health systems and medical groups are using to win physician talent
- How contract labor supports retention rather than undercutting it