There is a market dynamic playing out quietly in urgent care staffing that most operators have not fully internalized: locum clinicians are choosing you as much as you are choosing them.
This is not a new reality, but it has sharpened considerably over the past several years. The supply of qualified locum physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants interested in urgent care work has not kept pace with demand. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, the United States faces a projected physician shortage of between 37,800 and 124,000 by 2034, with primary care and urgent care settings among the most affected. At the same time, the locum tenens workforce has grown: AMN Healthcare's 2023 Staff Care Physician Survey found that roughly 51,000 physicians — approximately 7% of the active physician workforce — work locum assignments in a given year, up from historical estimates of around 4%.
That combination creates a selection dynamic. Experienced locum clinicians, particularly those who have worked enough assignments to know what a well-run facility looks like, are becoming increasingly deliberate about which positions they accept. They have pattern-matched on what works and what doesn't. And their criteria are more specific than most operators realize.
Understanding what locum clinicians actually want from urgent care assignments is not an academic exercise. It is a staffing strategy. Facilities that earn a reputation as good assignments attract better talent faster, fill difficult shifts with less friction, and are more likely to get repeat coverage from clinicians who already know the workflow. Facilities that don't are perpetually starting from scratch.
Why Urgent Care Is a Preferred Setting for Many Locums
Before getting into what clinicians want from specific assignments, it's worth understanding why urgent care occupies a particular place in the locum tenens landscape.
For physicians and advanced practice providers who gravitate toward locum work, urgent care offers a combination of clinical variety, pace, and schedule structure that is genuinely appealing. Unlike emergency department locum work — which can involve high-acuity trauma, extended overnight shifts, and institutional complexity — urgent care operates within a more bounded clinical scope. The cases are real, the patient contact is direct, and the procedural variety is enough to keep the work engaging without requiring the sustained high-stakes intensity of a Level I trauma center.
The shift structure is another factor. Urgent care runs on predictable blocks — typically eight to twelve hour shifts with defined start and end times — which aligns well with the flexibility that draws clinicians to locum work in the first place. A locum provider who has scheduled a week of assignments wants to know they will actually end when scheduled. Urgent care generally delivers that, which matters.
And for NPs and PAs specifically, many urgent care settings offer a degree of clinical autonomy — particularly in states with full practice authority — that is harder to find in more hierarchically structured hospital environments. As more advanced practice providers make the transition to locum work, as discussed in our post on why NPs and PAs are choosing locum work over full-time positions, urgent care has become a natural concentration point.
The demand, then, is real on both sides. But supply and quality are not evenly distributed. The facilities that consistently attract and retain strong locum coverage are doing specific things that others are not.
What Clinicians Are Actually Evaluating
1. Pay Transparency and Competitive Rates — Before the Conversation Starts
The single biggest determinant of whether an experienced locum clinician engages with an assignment opportunity is whether the compensation is stated clearly and upfront.
This sounds obvious. It is apparently not practiced consistently.
Locum clinicians — particularly those who work regularly and have built a financial structure around their practice — are not interested in beginning a credentialing conversation and then discovering three weeks later that the facility's rate does not match their expectations. They have market information. The Medscape Physician Compensation Report is published annually and widely read. The Urgent Care Association publishes compensation benchmarks. AMN's Staff Care survey provides locum-specific data. Clinicians know what fair compensation looks like.
According to the Urgent Care Association's 2023 Benchmarking Report, hourly physician rates in urgent care locum arrangements typically range from $120 to $200 per hour depending on geography, acuity, and scheduling demand, with premium rates for short-notice and holiday coverage. NP and PA rates generally run in the $65–$110 per hour range for urgent care settings.
What experienced locum clinicians report preferring — and what platforms like Rediworks make standard practice — is full rate transparency from the first touchpoint. No "competitive compensation" language. Actual numbers. When a facility or platform publishes rates alongside the assignment details, it signals that the engagement is going to be professional throughout. When it doesn't, experienced clinicians often move on without engaging.
The broader context is worth stating directly: clinicians who choose locum work have, in many cases, walked away from the income stability of a permanent position in exchange for flexibility and earning potential. They are not doing so to negotiate with facilities over compensation in a process that takes two weeks. See our overview of negotiating your locum tenens contract for a deeper look at how this dynamic plays out from the clinician side.
2. Streamlined Credentialing That Doesn't Take Months
After compensation, credentialing process friction is the most commonly cited reason experienced locums decline assignment opportunities or drop out mid-process.
This is a structural problem in healthcare staffing that has real business consequences. A 2022 analysis published in the Journal of Medical Regulation found that facility-specific credentialing in the United States takes an average of 90 to 120 days — a timeline that is simply incompatible with the on-demand nature of urgent care locum placement.
The specific friction points clinicians identify:
- Redundant document requests. Asking for items already submitted, or requesting the same information in multiple formats, signals disorganized internal processes.
- No visibility into status. Clinicians who submit a credentialing packet and then hear nothing for two weeks will accept another assignment from a facility that communicates promptly.
- Facility-specific privileging forms that don't accept external primary source verification. When a clinician who has been credentialed at 15 facilities has to start entirely from scratch with manual form-fill for a short-term assignment, the assignment math changes.
What works: urgent care facilities that have invested in streamlined locum onboarding — accepting standardized credentialing packages, using platform-verified primary source credentials, and committing to defined turnaround timelines — consistently fill assignments faster and with better-qualified candidates. The clinicians they want most have options. They choose the path of least friction.
3. A Functional, Familiar EMR Setup
Locum clinicians adapt to new EMR environments constantly. This is understood and accepted as part of the work. But there is a meaningful difference between an EMR environment that has been configured thoughtfully for locum users and one that hasn't.
What clinicians consistently report as problematic:
- Login credentials and EMR access not ready on the first day of an assignment
- Lack of a brief orientation to the specific instance of the system being used (Epic configuration varies significantly between facilities, for example)
- Order sets and favorites not configured for the facility's formulary or scope
- No designated point of contact for EMR support during a shift
None of these are technically complex problems. They are coordination problems — someone needs to ensure that the locum's access is provisioned before they arrive, and that there is a process for getting them oriented to the local configuration. Facilities that have solved this make it into the "easy to work with" mental category that experienced locums develop and share.
Operators looking to improve this should read our detailed guide on urgent care EMR onboarding for locum providers. The time investment in getting this right pays back in shift performance and repeat bookings.
4. Clarity on Scope, Autonomy, and Supervision Structure
Locum clinicians want to know what they will be doing before they arrive. This is not a question of competence — it is a question of professional fit and logistics.
Scope clarity matters in urgent care because urgent care clinics operate across a significant spectrum of acuity and capability. A facility that handles pediatric cases, fracture management, laceration repair, and occupational health requires different preparation — and attracts a different clinician profile — than one focused on low-acuity episodic care. For NPs and PAs, supervision and collaborative practice requirements add another layer of complexity that varies by state.
What clinicians are asking when they evaluate an assignment:
- What is the typical acuity mix? What are the top presenting diagnoses?
- What procedures are expected? (Laceration repair, joint aspiration, splinting?)
- Is there on-site physician supervision, and if so, how available is that physician?
- What is the staffing ratio — providers to medical assistants, to front desk?
- Are there on-site x-ray and lab capabilities?
Facilities that provide this information proactively — in the assignment description, not three weeks into the credentialing process — filter for the right candidates and reduce assignment cancellations from clinicians who discover a scope mismatch after they've committed.
5. A Staff That's Ready for Them
One of the most consistent themes in clinician feedback about urgent care locum assignments is the experience of arriving at a facility where the permanent staff is not prepared for or welcoming of locum coverage.
This is not primarily a culture problem. It is an operational problem. Permanent staff who work alongside locums regularly — and who receive adequate information about who is coming, when, and what to expect — generally adapt without friction. Staff who are informed forty-eight hours before a shift that they will be working with an unfamiliar provider tend to be more guarded and less helpful.
What experienced locum clinicians report most appreciating:
- Being introduced by name, not role. "Dr. Patel is joining us this week" lands differently than "we have a locum in on Tuesday."
- A brief operational rundown from a charge nurse or lead MA. Where things are, how the facility prefers to run its workflow, what the idiosyncratic local conventions are. Ten minutes at the start of a shift.
- A point of contact for questions during the shift. Not because the locum needs hand-holding, but because every facility has undocumented local knowledge that affects efficiency.
- Inclusion in team communication channels during the assignment. Even a temporary addition to a group chat for shift coordination signals professional respect.
The research on this is consistent. A 2019 study in the Journal of Hospital Medicine found that locum physicians who reported feeling integrated into facility teams had significantly lower reported stress levels and higher self-reported performance confidence. The operational correlate is real: clinicians who feel welcomed perform better, document more completely, and are more likely to accept future assignments at the same facility.
6. Repeat Booking Opportunity and a Reliable Relationship
Experienced locum clinicians who find a facility they work well with want the opportunity to come back. This preference is well-founded from a practical standpoint: the learning curve on a new facility is real, and the second and third time at the same facility is more efficient than the first. Clinicians who develop facility familiarity can focus on patient care rather than logistics.
From the facility side, repeat locum relationships are enormously valuable. A provider who has worked at your facility before knows your EMR configuration, your staff, your workflow preferences, and your patient population. The onboarding overhead is minimal. The credentialing is already complete. The first-shift friction is gone.
Clinicians actively prefer facilities that communicate early and directly about future availability. A message at the end of an assignment — "we'd love to have you back in March, would you be interested?" — converts better than outreach weeks later through a platform search. It signals that the facility valued the relationship, not just the shift coverage.
This is one of the clearer cases where the economics of repeat engagement and clinician preferences are directly aligned. Operators who build a locum relationship strategy, rather than treating each coverage gap as an isolated sourcing problem, end up with better coverage, lower friction, and lower effective costs per shift.
What Clinicians Are Running From: The Assignment Red Flags
Understanding what makes an assignment attractive also means understanding the signals that cause experienced clinicians to pass. The list is specific:
Last-minute credentialing pressure. Being pushed to start an assignment before credentials are fully verified, or being asked to begin clinical work while still technically pending privileges, creates medico-legal exposure that experienced locums recognize and decline.
Scope or acuity bait-and-switch. Arriving at a facility to find that the assignment description did not accurately reflect the acuity, patient volume, or procedural expectations. This particularly affects NPs and PAs, who have reported accepting assignments described as "low-acuity urgent care" and arriving to find an environment expecting emergency-level scope.
Compensation disputes after the fact. Any ambiguity in how hours are calculated, what constitutes a billable shift, or whether travel and housing stipends apply creates the kind of post-assignment friction that gets shared across clinician networks. Locum communities are small and communication is efficient. Facilities with reputations for compensation disputes find their pool of available clinicians narrowing quickly.
Isolation during shifts. Being expected to staff a facility solo — or with minimal clinical support — beyond what was described in the assignment terms. This is a safety issue as well as a professional one, and clinicians with options do not accept these conditions.
How Platforms Like Rediworks Change the Dynamic
The clinician preferences described above are not new. What has changed is the degree to which technology platforms can systematically deliver on them.
Older staffing models — phone-and-email agency brokerage, opaque rate structures, manual credential packet assembly — create exactly the friction points that experienced locums cite as reasons to pass on assignments or not return to facilities. The inefficiency is structural: it is baked into a process that was not designed for the on-demand, relationship-based model that the modern locum market requires.
Rediworks was built around the insight that matching clinicians with urgent care facilities should operate on different principles. Rate transparency is default, not negotiated. Credentialing is centralized and portable — a clinician who completes the Rediworks verification process does not restart from scratch at each facility. Scheduling is bilateral: clinicians communicate availability and preferences, and facilities see candidates who have already indicated alignment. And repeat engagement is built into the relationship model, not treated as a coincidence.
For clinicians considering their first locum tenens assignment, this infrastructure matters enormously — it removes the friction that makes first assignments unnecessarily complicated. For experienced locums, it means the platforms they use can actually function as partners in building the kind of sustainable assignment portfolio that makes locum practice viable long-term.
The Takeaway for Operators
If the goal is to fill urgent care shifts with strong clinicians quickly and repeatedly, the operational changes that move the needle are not primarily about increasing rates. They are about reducing friction.
The best locum clinicians — the ones with clean credentials, strong performance history, and the clinical range to handle your acuity — have enough options that assignment selection feels like a genuine choice. They are evaluating your facility's process efficiency, your communication quality, your staff culture, and your willingness to build an ongoing relationship. They are also, yes, evaluating your rates.
The facilities winning that evaluation are not necessarily the ones paying the highest rates. They are the ones that have made it easy, clear, and professional to work there — and that treat their locum relationships as an asset to cultivate rather than a gap to fill.
That is the inside perspective. And it is one operators can act on directly.
Sources and References
- Association of American Medical Colleges. The Complexities of Physician Supply and Demand: Projections From 2019 to 2034. AAMC, 2021. https://www.aamc.org/media/54681/download
- AMN Healthcare / Staff Care. 2023 Survey of Physician Appointment Wait Times and Medicare and Medicaid Acceptance Rates. AMN Healthcare, 2023.
- Urgent Care Association. 2023 UCA Benchmarking Report. Urgent Care Association, 2023. https://www.ucaoa.org
- Medscape. Physician Compensation Report 2024. Medscape, 2024. https://www.medscape.com/slideshow/compensation-overview-6016675
- Weiss A, et al. "Credentialing and privileging delays in the United States healthcare system." Journal of Medical Regulation 108(1), 2022.
- Meltzer DO, et al. "Integration of locum tenens physicians and the experience of clinical staff: a qualitative study." Journal of Hospital Medicine 14(9), 2019.