Urgent care operators feel the provider shortage as open shifts, overtime and a permanent team that's covering more than it signed up for. The causes sit well outside any one clinic, and they aren't short-term. An operator can't fix the national supply of clinicians. What an operator can change is how the clinic's schedule is built around a market where clinicians are hard to find.
What the provider shortage numbers say
Physician supply is projected to fall short for years. A 2024 projection from the Association of American Medical Colleges put the national shortage at up to 86,000 physicians by 2036. In the same report, physicians 65 or older made up 20% of the clinical physician workforce and those 55 to 64 another 22%. A large share of today's physicians will reach retirement age within the planning horizon of any clinic opening now.
Burnout has eased and is still common. In the American Medical Association's survey series, the share of physicians reporting at least one symptom of burnout peaked at 62.8% in 2021, then fell to 53% in 2022 and 48.2% in 2023. The direction is good. A workforce where close to half of physicians report a burnout symptom is still one where reduced hours and early exits are ordinary.
Demand for NPs and PAs is rising everywhere at once. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects employment of nurse practitioners to grow much faster than the average for all occupations. That growth is spread across all of healthcare. Urgent care competes for the same NPs and PAs as primary care, specialty practices and retail clinics.
Urgent care already leans on locum coverage. The Association for Advancing Physician and Provider Recruitment reports that organizations used locum tenens as a stopgap in 16.4% of physician searches in 2024, up from 9.2% in 2023. For urgent care searches the figure was 41.5%. That is the share of searches where a locum covered the role while the search ran. It doesn't measure how many searches failed.
How the provider shortage shows up in an urgent care
The shortage reaches operations before it reaches the financials. The usual signs:
- Door-to-provider time rises across all shifts, including the slow ones.
- Clinicians regularly finish well after their scheduled end.
- Call-outs cluster on the heaviest shifts: Friday afternoons, weekend mornings, holiday weeks.
- Overtime and premium shift pay take a growing share of labor cost.
- Permanent staff reduce hours or leave.
These feed each other. When one clinician cuts back, the rest absorb the hours, and the added load pushes the next person toward the same decision. The earlier the cycle is interrupted, the fewer people it costs you.
The first of those signs has its own post: how shift coverage drives urgent care wait times.
Planning coverage around the provider shortage
Line up locum clinicians before a shift is open
The weakest position in a tight market is looking for a clinician on the day you need one. Anyone new has to pass your clinic's review and get EMR access before they can work, so the search and the paperwork both start late.
Do that work ahead of need. Identify clinicians who fit your clinic, complete your review and system setup, and then post shifts to people who can accept them. Every clinician who has already worked a shift with you is easier to schedule the next time, because the review and the first-day orientation are behind them. What a locum needs before a first shift covers that first day.
Use locum shifts to protect the permanent team
Locum coverage isn't only for vacancies. If your permanent clinicians work every Friday evening and every weekend because those shifts are the hardest to fill, the shortage is being paid for out of their schedules. Placing locum shifts on some of those slots, even when a permanent clinician could technically work them, takes the heaviest shifts off the same few people.
The comparison to make is between the cost of those locum shifts and the cost of replacing a clinician who leaves: the recruiting, the vacancy and the overtime in between. What an unfilled urgent care shift costs gives a way to put your own numbers on the vacancy side.
Make your own review fast and predictable
A clinician with several clinics to choose from will work first where getting cleared is clear and quick. Publish what you require, ask for each document once, and tell clinicians where their file stands without being asked. Time your review from first document to cleared, and work on whichever step takes longest.
Decide the staffing mix on purpose
Many urgent cares respond to the physician shortage by scheduling more NP and PA shifts. Whether that works for a given shift depends on your services, your patient mix and the rules where you operate. Supervision and collaboration requirements for NPs and PAs differ by state and by role, so confirm what applies to you with your medical director and your attorney before changing the model.
Support roles belong in the plan too. A clinic that adds provider hours without enough RN and MA hours behind them hasn't added capacity. The rooms just turn over more slowly.
Post shifts a clinician can evaluate
In a market where clinicians choose, the listing does the recruiting. A clinician deciding between shifts wants the rate, the hours, the location, the patient volume to expect, what's available on site and which EMR you run. A listing that holds any of that back for a later phone call loses to one that states it.
That's also the argument for how Rediworks lists shifts: rate, location, shift length and facility appear on every listing before a clinician applies.
Where to start with the provider shortage
- Map where coverage is thinnest. Which shifts run over, where wait times are climbing, which days draw the most call-outs.
- Write down what each of those shifts needs. Role, hours, scope of what the clinic sees, and the support staff behind it.
- Clear two or three locum clinicians for those shifts now. Finish your review before there's an emergency attached to it.
- Look at how your current coverage is sourced. If clinicians arrive unfamiliar with your EMR or your patient mix, fix the listing and the orientation. A traditional agency still earns its fee where you want a recruiter to run the search for you or where clinicians need travel and housing arranged. How Rediworks compares lays out the differences.
Rediworks is a self-service marketplace for urgent care locum shifts. You post the shifts you need by clinician type and date, and clinicians apply with a credential wallet they've already built. Sign up to post shifts.