Healthcare is experiencing a physician shortage, and organizations are relying on locum tenens more than ever to keep operations running smoothly. According to a study done by CHG Healthcare, provider of U.S. locum tenens staffing, the number of locum tenens clinicians in use rose to 81% in 2024.
Ongoing clinician shortages, rising burnout, and fluctuating patient volumes continue to create staffing gaps that can’t be filled through traditional hiring alone. As a result, the locum tenens staffing market has grown into a multibillion-dollar segment and demand is still climbing.
For staffing firms and healthcare organizations, this growth comes with a clear operational mandate: shorten time-to-start without sacrificing quality or compliance. That’s especially challenging when credentialing, onboarding, and scheduling happen in different systems.
Let’s explore how to accelerate locum onboarding by aligning your ATS, credentialing tools, and workforce management systems.
Why is Locum Tenens Use Increasing?
Locums have become a necessary way to provide coverage. Health systems are using them to:
- Fill temporary positions during leaves, vacancies, and seasonal surges
- Reduce overtime and burnout among permanent staff
- Expand service lines or add weekend/evening availability
- Support smaller or rural facilities with difficult-to-fill specialties
SIA reports that with the cost of vacancies so high, organizations use locums to mitigate loss.
Additionally, there are benefits to working as a locum tenens professional and more clinicians are seeking the independence and flexibility this type of work offers. This combination has made locums central to modern workforce strategies, particularly in hospitals facing tight margins and unpredictable volumes, or those located in rural areas.
As in all healthcare staffing, speed matters. Many organizations lose top candidates or suffer costly coverage gaps because the hiring and onboarding process isn't streamlined from start to finish.
The Locum Workflow
A standard locum placement moves through several steps, including:
- Job requisition
- Candidate sourcing and submission
- Client review and selection
- Credentialing and primary-source verification
- Scheduling and shift confirmation
Most delays occur between steps three and five. Credentialing is the biggest bottleneck, followed by miscommunication between recruiting, credentialing teams, and scheduling staff. Data silos—different systems for ATS, credentialing, and scheduling—exacerbate the issue.
The good news is that with integrated systems and clear workflows, organizations can significantly shorten time-to-start for these crucial placements.
How Can You Accelerate Locum Onboarding?
1. Use Your ATS as the ONE System
Your healthcare ATS should house every essential data point required downstream—licenses, certifications, documents, availability, compliance notes, and more. To make that happen:
- Build structured fields for locum-specific credential requirements.
- Automate document collection with mobile upload and expiry reminders.
- Create dedicated workflows for locums that route tasks to credentialing teams immediately after candidate selection.
A well-configured ATS reduces duplicate entry, ensures nothing gets missed, and gives every stakeholder real-time visibility.
2. Integrate Credentialing Tools
Credentialing often determines whether a locum can start in two weeks or two months. To streamline this step:
- Connect your ATS directly to credentialing software or verification vendors.
- Auto-populate provider data from the ATS instead of reentering it.
- Enable multiple verifications to happen at once.
- Use automated alerts to keep clinicians engaged in completing outstanding tasks.
Staffing firms that integrate credentialing into their ATS workflow typically see faster verification cycles and fewer back-and-forth delays.
3. Coordinate Scheduling Early
Scheduling teams often wait until credentialing is complete before building out shifts. That adds unnecessary days to the process.
A better approach:
- Enable schedulers to tentatively assign shifts as soon as a candidate is selected.
- Sync availability and preferences from the ATS directly into your WFM tool.
- Use conditional confirmations (“pending clearance”) to hold coverage without miscommunication.
- Automate credential-cleared notifications so schedulers can lock in shifts immediately.
This approach not only speeds time-to-start but also helps departments plan coverage proactively.
4. Build a Locum-Specific Workflow Across Systems
Every locum assignment follows the same core steps, yet many organizations reinvent the wheel with each new placement. Standardizing the process pays off quickly.
Here is a recommended workflow:
- ATS—Candidate submission → automated credentialing packet launch
- Credentialing system—Real-time status updates → automated clearance flag
- WFM/scheduling—Shift assignment → confirmation sent back to ATS
The key is two-way data flow. When systems talk to each other, nothing gets lost, and every team works from the same source of truth.
5. Provide Clear Compliance Checklists
Locums move quickly and most want to start as soon as possible. Giving candidates a transparent path to clearance reduces delays and improves the experience.
Consider offering:
- Specialty-specific credentialing checklists
- Turnaround expectations for license verification, privileging, and training
- Mobile-first document collection
- Auto-reminders for missing items
Providing clear guidance will help keep candidates engaged and reduces administrative overhead.
Tele-Locums and Virtual Coverage
Tele-locums is an emerging trend and a great strategy for filling positions, especially for psychiatry, radiology, and after-hours coverage. These roles can start faster, but compliance is still essential. Organizations should verify multi-state licensure, include telehealth training and platform access during onboarding, and align scheduling with virtual coverage expectations.
For many facilities, adding tele-locums is a cost-effective way to expand services without expanding physical coverage.
Faster Time-to-Start Equals Better Care
Locum tenens is a growing and crucial part of healthcare staffing strategies. The organizations that excel at placing them quickly are the ones that take a technology-first approach—centralized data, automated credentialing workflows, and coordinated shift scheduling.
When locum onboarding is fully integrated, staffing teams see measurable improvements:
- Shorter time-to-fill and fewer coverage lapses
- Lower administrative burden on recruiters and credentialing staff
- Faster revenue recovery for departments affected by vacancies
- Better clinician experience, strengthening long-term relationships
- More predictable scheduling and lower overtime costs
The combined impact extends well beyond speed; it supports operational consistency and delivery of quality care.
For staffing firms and hiring managers, improving this process doesn’t require reinventing it. It simply requires aligning the systems already in place and building a workflow that moves as fast as the clinicians you need.
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