Locum tenens travel and housing work differently depending on who is arranging them. On an agency assignment away from home, the agency usually books or reimburses your flights and lodging. On shifts you pick up yourself, you arrange and pay for your own. This guide covers both, starting with which one applies to you.
Rediworks doesn't arrange or pay for travel or housing. It lists individual urgent care shifts, and most of this guide is general advice for locum clinicians who travel for work, whoever they work through. If you want someone else to book your flights and apartment, a traditional agency with a travel desk is the better fit for that part of the job.
Who arranges locum tenens travel and housing
There are three common arrangements, and the contract or shift terms will say which one you're in.
The agency books it. The agency reserves and pays for a furnished apartment or extended-stay hotel, and often the flight and rental car. You arrive and check in. You don't choose the location or the property.
You get a stipend. The agency or facility pays a fixed amount and you find your own lodging. You control where you stay, and you do the searching, the booking and the paperwork.
You're on your own. The rate is the rate, and getting there is your cost. This is how shifts listed on Rediworks work, and it's why per-shift work suits clinicians who live and are licensed nearby.
In the third arrangement, travel is part of the shift's price. A shift two hours away costs four hours of driving and possibly a hotel night, so subtract those from the pay before comparing it with a shift across town.
Questions to ask about agency-arranged housing
If an agency is arranging locum tenens housing for you, get these answers before you accept the assignment:
- Is housing provided directly, or is it a stipend?
- If it's provided, is it an apartment or a hotel, and can you see the address first?
- If it's a stipend, how much is it, which dates does it cover, and when is it paid?
- Are flights, a rental car, mileage and parking covered, and is there a cap on any of them?
- Is reimbursement paid up front, with each paycheck, or after the assignment ends?
- Who do you call, on a weekend, if the reservation isn't there when you arrive?
Confirm the address and any car reservation a week before you travel. A booking under the wrong name is easy to fix on a Tuesday afternoon and hard to fix at a check-in desk on a Sunday night.
Booking your own locum tenens housing
When you're finding your own place, the options sort by length of stay.
A few nights. A standard hotel near the clinic is the simplest answer for a block of two or three shifts. Check the drive at the hour you'd be commuting, not the distance on the map.
One to four weeks. Extended-stay hotels have in-room kitchens and laundry on site, and they don't require a lease. They cost more per night than an apartment and offer less space.
A month or more. Furnished monthly rentals are generally cheaper per night and easier to live in than a hotel room. Many require a 30-day minimum, so they don't suit shorter stays, and availability depends heavily on the market.
Before you book anything, ask what happens if the assignment is shortened or canceled. A nonrefundable month of rent against an assignment that can end with two weeks' notice is a loss you'd carry yourself. Refundable rates and flexible cancellation cost more, and on locum work they're often worth it.
Travel habits for locum clinicians who fly often
A clinician who flies to assignments several times a year can save time with a few standing decisions.
Stay with one airline and one hotel group where you can. Loyalty status builds faster when your bookings aren't spread across competitors, and the benefits that matter for work travel are checked bags and rebooking priority when a flight is canceled the night before a shift.
Enroll in a trusted traveler program. TSA PreCheck shortens the security line on domestic flights. Global Entry speeds up customs when you return from abroad, and Global Entry members also receive TSA PreCheck benefits, so one enrollment covers both.
Fly in with margin. The last flight of the day before a morning shift leaves no room for a delay. Arriving the afternoon before costs a few hours and protects the shift.
Carry on what you can't work without. Anything you need for the first shift, including your badge documents and work shoes, should travel with you and not in a checked bag.
A standing kit for locum tenens travel
Packing from scratch for each trip is where things get forgotten. A kit that stays packed between assignments, with trip-specific items added on top, takes less time and less thought.
For work:
- Your own stethoscope and any small tools you prefer to use
- Clinic-appropriate clothing (ask in advance whether the clinic expects scrubs or business casual, and whether it has a color policy)
- Shoes you can stand in for a full shift
For living:
- A toiletry kit you refill but never unpack
- Laundry detergent sheets or pods
- Workout clothes, if exercise is part of how you recover between shifts
- One kitchen item that makes a rental kitchen usable for you
For paperwork:
- Digital copies of your license, certifications and, if you prescribe, DEA registration, saved where you can reach them from your phone
- Your insurance cards and an emergency contact on paper
- A battery pack and a spare charging cable
The first day in a new place
A short routine on arrival day takes the uncertainty out of the first morning.
- Confirm your first shift's start time and your contact at the clinic. Details sometimes change after the original confirmation.
- Drive the route to the clinic and find staff parking.
- Buy three days of groceries. Without them you'll eat out for every meal in the first week, which is expensive and makes long days longer.
- Find one thing nearby you'd like to do on a day off and put it on your calendar.
Locum tenens travel expenses and the tax home rule
Whether travel costs are deductible, and whether a housing stipend is taxable, both turn on a concept called the tax home. The rules below are a general description, not tax advice.
Your tax home is the city or general area where your main place of work is located, regardless of where your family home is. Depending on how your income is classified, travel expenses can be deductible when you're working away from your tax home on a temporary assignment. An assignment counts as temporary when it's realistically expected to last a year or less, and any assignment longer than one year is treated as indefinite.
A clinician who moves from assignment to assignment with no regular place of work and no home they regularly live in can be treated as an itinerant, whose tax home is wherever they work. An itinerant can't deduct travel expenses, because they're never considered to be away from home.
How this applies to you depends on facts an accountant needs to see: where you live, where you work most, how your income is classified, and how any stipend is structured and documented. Talk to one who works with traveling clinicians before your first assignment away from home. The locum taxes guide explains more of the background.
Locum tenens work without the travel
Travel is optional in locum work. Picking up urgent care shifts within driving distance of home gives you the schedule control without the flights, the rentals or the tax home questions. If the logistics in this guide sound like more overhead than you want, start there.
For what happens once you arrive, see what to expect on a first locum tenens assignment. If you're working at several clinics, our post on managing multiple locum assignments without burnout covers scheduling.
Rediworks is a self-service marketplace for urgent care shifts. Each listing shows the rate, location, shift length and facility before you apply, so you can see how far a shift is before you commit to it. Sign up to see shifts.