Editorial Note: Locum Pay Guide is an independent educational resource. No staffing agency, malpractice provider, or financial service pays to influence our content. Affiliate relationships are disclosed. Our editorial positions are our own. Quick Facts: Locum Tenens Compensation at a Glance Factor Detail Average physician locum hourly rate ~$215/hour (physician-reported, 2025) Emergency Medicine range $200–$300/hour…
Locum tenens — Latin for “to hold the place” — is temporary physician coverage that fills gaps at hospitals, clinics, and health systems across the country. For physicians, it means working as an independent contractor on an assignment-by-assignment basis, with control over schedule, location, and specialty focus that permanent employment rarely allows. The U.S. locum…
Most locum tenens contracts are written by agency or facility legal teams whose job is to protect the agency or facility — not you. That is not a criticism; it is just how contracts work. The problem is that physicians are trained to read clinical data, not contract language, and the clauses that carry the…
Locum tenens physicians operating as 1099 independent contractors have access to a significant range of business deductions that employed physicians cannot claim. The tradeoff for that flexibility is self-employment tax, multi-state filing complexity, and the need to document everything correctly. This guide covers the core deductions available to 1099 locum physicians in 2026 — what…
Weatherby Healthcare and AMN Healthcare are both major players in the locum tenens market, but they operate from fundamentally different business models, serve different facility types, and carry different conflicts of interest. Weatherby is a specialist-focused locum agency owned by CHG Healthcare. AMN is a publicly traded enterprise workforce company where locum placement is one…
CompHealth and AMN Healthcare are the two largest locum tenens agencies in the country by revenue and facility network. They are also structurally different in ways that matter for physicians — different ownership models, different business priorities, and different negotiating dynamics. This comparison covers what those differences mean in practice, where each agency has a…
Utah’s locum tenens market combines a dominant integrated health system, significant rural shortage geography, and a 2026 legislative reform that materially changed the non-compete landscape for healthcare clinicians. Intermountain Health and University of Utah Health anchor the Wasatch Front, while more than 20 of the state’s 29 counties carry federal HPSA designations — creating steady…
Kentucky’s locum tenens market is defined by one of the most acute rural physician shortage geographies in the country. Eastern Kentucky’s Appalachian counties carry federal HPSA designations across more than 20 counties, with shortage scores that reflect demand exceeding half of estimated need in primary care. UK HealthCare anchors the central and eastern market from…
Georgia’s locum tenens market combines the scale of a major Southeast hub with persistent rural shortage geography that extends well beyond the Atlanta metro. Emory Healthcare, Wellstar Health System, Grady Memorial, and Piedmont Healthcare anchor the urban and suburban market, while community hospitals and federally qualified health centers across the state’s rural counties create steady…
South Carolina’s locum tenens market is shaped less by a single flagship employer than by one of the most widespread rural shortage geographies in the Southeast. More than 40 of the state’s 46 counties carry federal HPSA designations, creating sustained demand for primary care and hard-to-fill specialties across community hospitals, regional health systems, and federally…
CompHealth, Weatherby Healthcare, and AMN Healthcare collectively dominate the locum tenens placement market. Between them they place more physicians than any other combination of agencies — which means most locum physicians will encounter at least one of them, and many will work with two or all three simultaneously. This comparison covers the structural differences that…