The locum tenens market has more than doubled since 2019 — rising from roughly $5.2 billion to a projected $9.6 billion in 2025 [PRN Funding]. Physician shortages are accelerating. Hospitals are leaning harder on locum coverage than ever before.
And yet, most hospitals still manage their locum tenens programs the same way they did a decade ago: spreadsheets, email chains, phone calls, and a fragmented roster of agencies with no standardized process.
That mismatch — a growing, high-stakes program managed with manual tools — is exactly where locum tenens vendor management software changes everything.
Locum tenens isn't a simple line item. Every locum placement involves credentialing verification, malpractice coverage confirmation, privileging, scheduling, timekeeping, and invoicing. Multiply that across dozens of placements and multiple staffing agencies, and the administrative complexity compounds fast.
Without a centralized system, hospitals are operating with significant blind spots:
The result: overpayment, compliance risk, and an administrative burden that falls on already-stretched staffing coordinators.
Locum tenens vendor management software is a technology platform that centralizes every step of the locum staffing lifecycle — from requisition to payment — in a single system. Think of it as the operational command center for your physician and advanced practice staffing program.
Here's what a purpose-built locum VMS handles end-to-end:
When a department needs locum coverage, a requisition is created in the system with role requirements, shift details, and credential requirements. The VMS distributes that requisition simultaneously to all approved locum agencies — creating competitive submission rather than relying on a single preferred vendor.
Every locum provider must meet strict credentialing requirements before they can practice. A VMS automates the collection, verification, and tracking of licenses, DEA registration, malpractice coverage, immunizations, and background checks — with automatic alerts when documents approach expiration. This is where manual programs fail most visibly: a missed credential expiration is both a compliance risk and a patient safety issue.
Locum shifts are confirmed in the platform. Providers clock in and out digitally. Timesheets are reviewed and approved without paper, fax, or email — and the data flows directly to billing.
Instead of reconciling invoices from five different locum agencies, a VMS generates a single consolidated invoice covering all providers. One invoice, one payment, one audit trail.
Real-time dashboards show locum spend by department, specialty, facility, and time period. Vendor fill rates, quality scores, and rate comparisons are visible at a glance — giving you the data to make smarter sourcing decisions.
Consider the scale of what hospitals are managing. 44% of physicians who changed jobs in 2024 took a locum position [Business Wire]. The locum market is growing at 9–10% annually, with less than 30% of placements currently managed through centralized platforms [Locumsmart].
That gap — 70%+ of locum placements still managed without a VMS — represents an enormous opportunity for hospitals willing to modernize. The organizations that have centralized their locum programs are seeing measurable results: reduced cost per placement, faster time-to-fill, and dramatically less administrative overhead.
According to HWL Works, the key questions when evaluating a locum VMS come down to: Does it understand the unique complexity of physician credentialing? Can it handle the nuances of locum billing (daily rates, per diem, travel expenses)? And does it give you visibility across all your locum agencies — or does it favor one?
Locum tenens and travel nursing are often lumped together in workforce discussions, but they require different management workflows. Physicians and advanced practitioners have longer credentialing cycles, higher placement costs, and more complex billing structures than nursing staff.
A VMS purpose-built for healthcare handles both — but the locum-specific features matter enormously: specialty-level credentialing, malpractice tail coverage tracking, privilege verification, and rate structures that include travel and housing allowances. A generic procurement tool won't have these built in.
Not all vendor management platforms are built for the complexity of physician staffing. When evaluating locum tenens VMS options, prioritize:
The locum tenens market is too large, too complex, and too strategically important to manage with spreadsheets. As physician shortages deepen and locum reliance grows, the hospitals that will gain competitive advantage are those that bring the same operational discipline to locum management that they apply to every other major spend category.
Locum tenens vendor management software isn't a luxury for large health systems. It's the infrastructure that makes a high-functioning locum program possible — at any scale.
Ringo is the only vendor-neutral talent management system purpose-built for healthcare — handling locum tenens, travel nursing, and contingent workforce management on a single platform, with no agency affiliations and no conflicts of interest.
Want to see how Ringo manages your locum tenens program end-to-end?