How Locum Tenens Can Be a Game Changer for Rural Hospitals

There’s a real crisis in the rural healthcare workforce: Becker Hospital Review reported in December 2023 that 106 rural hospitals closed between 2010 and 2020, leaving millions of Americans without access to a hospital’s services. 

Could the use of locums help with this crisis? Yes. In fact, they can offer a true solution. 

This shortage in rural healthcare is one that deserves a multidimensional and strategic response, with the use of locum tenens pros filling a crucial role in the solution. 

By providing temporary staffing support, locum tenens practitioners will help ease the strain on overworked rural healthcare teams, improve rural residents access to important care and thus enhance the quality of life for rural communities. 

One of the top causes driving the closing of rural hospitals is the difficulty those hospitals have in attracting and retaining an adequate number of healthcare professionals. Rural areas have a hard time competing with the amenities, salaries and resources of more urban areas, making it hard for rural hospital administrators to recruit – and then keep – a robust workforce. 

Locum tenens pros can fill these gaps, helping make sure that rural residents have access healthcare services. 

In addition, the U.S.’ population is aging, which also puts pressure in these areas. What’s more, rural areas often are home to more older adults than suburban/urban areas, putting even more of a strain on an already highly-strained medical services system: the need for geriatric medicine, chronic disease management and palliative care is increasing. 

Working with a locum tenens staffing providers can help supplement an existing workforce, thus making sure that rural residents can have top-notch medical care without having to travel a long distance. 

What’s more, locum tenens partnerships can help rural medical facilities when patient volume fluctuations occur due to seasonal disease events (flu-season, for example). By joining forces with a locum agency, a rural clinics and hospitals can quickly scale up — or down — their staffing needs to match demand. 

Locum tenens placements also can work as a recruitment “arm” of a rural facility: providing healthcare pros with the chance to experience the types of challenges and rewards they can experience only in a rural setting potentially could help them find candidates who could become interested in working in the area on a more permanent basis.  

The shortage of locum professionals serving rural populations is a complex issue, one that solve best with a multi-pronged approach. 

Yet using the flexibility and expertise of locum tenens healthcare pros will help rural medical facilities improve their patients’ access to care, upgrade the quality of the services they receive and – most importantly – increase their well-being. 

SUMO Staffing can provide your rural healthcare of medical facility with locum tenens pros such as physicians, surgeons, nurse practitioners, RNs, PTs, Ots, and more. 

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