Strengthening Workforce Strategy Through Balanced Locum Agency Sourcing
David Durbin
Strengthening Workforce Strategy Through Balanced Locum Agency Sourcing
Why diversifying locums supply is essential for financial stewardship, compliance assurance, and workforce resilience
The Current Landscape
More than 80% of healthcare organizations rely on locum tenens providers to maintain clinical continuity. Locum
agencies play a vital role in this ecosystem by delivering essential clinical talent at speed and at scale. As a result,
nearly all agencies have established trusted partnerships with healthcare systems.
As the industry has evolved, competition among agencies has driven improvements in candidate quality, delivery
speed, and service levels. However, as with any staffing vertical, agencies naturally strive to expand their share of
demand. Over time, this dynamic has unintentionally led some organizations to become highly concentrated with one primary agency.
While these close partnerships often feel efficient and familiar, it may also create structural vulnerabilities that are
difficult to see from within the relationship. These include:
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Cost Variability – Limited rate benchmarking can cause pricing to drift upward when supply rests with a single partner.
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Compliance Gaps – Consolidated oversight can reduce visibility into credentialing, invoicing accuracy, and contract adherence.
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Coverage Constraints – A narrower candidate pipeline may hinder speed-to-fill, delay start dates, and increase last-minute needs.
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Reduced Leverage – When one supplier dominates, negotiation dynamics naturally shift, limiting the organization’s ability to influence pricing and performance.
These challenges are not a reflection of any locum or staffing company overall, they are simply inherent in any concentrated supply model. Left unaddressed, it can impact financial stability, operational resilience, and ultimately, patient access.
When the majority of locum coverage flows through a single supplier, organizations often lose the market visibility needed to validate rates, evaluate candidate quality, and protect operational resilience.
The Executive Imperative
Healthcare leaders are increasingly taking steps to strengthen governance and reduce concentration risk. A modern workforce strategy requires the ability to:
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Maintain financial discipline through transparent pricing and invoice auditing.
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Expand market reach beyond a single agency’s candidate pool.
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Ensure consistent compliance and quality across all contingent clinicians.
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Protect organizational leverage with balanced sourcing models and diversified supply.
This is not about replacing trusted agency partners, it is about creating the structure that allows those partnerships to flourish within a broader, more resilient ecosystem.
How Trio Workforce Solutions Supports This Strategy
Trio Workforce Solutions offers a vendor-neutral design built specifically for healthcare, helping executives strengthen governance without compromising relationships or delivery.
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Balanced Access to Talent: Trio maintains a healthy, diversified marketplace so no single agency bears the burden, or control, of supply.
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Pricing and Compliance Governance: Automated benchmarking and invoice validation ensure financial integrity and contract adherence.
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Broader Market Reach: Access to a national network of locum agencies improves coverage consistency and reduces fill times.
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Operational Efficiency: Integrated workflows bring clarity and control to requisitions, credentialing, invoicing, and reporting.
Through neutrality and transparency, Trio enhances, not disrupts the contributions of valued agency partners.
Case Insight: Reimagining Physician Workforce Governance
When a large not-for-profit U.S. health system formed through the merger of two major healthcare organizations, leaders faced significant challenges managing their physician workforce and contingent staffing programs.
Multiple workforce models, including traditional vendor-led MSP programs, preferred supplier arrangements, and direct vendor relationships, created operational complexity and limited executive visibility into performance.
Key Challenges
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Vendor Dependency: Difficulty rationalizing vendor usage and reducing reliance on individual suppliers.
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Limited Workforce Analytics: Leadership lacked actionable insights needed to guide workforce decisions.
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Contractual Complexity: Numerous master service agreements created inflexible vendor relationships.
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Operational Risk: Limited oversight and inconsistent controls contributed to cost overruns and staffing inefficiencies.
Strategic Shift
The health system partnered with Trio Workforce Solutions to implement a vendor-neutral workforce management model designed to improve governance, transparency, and operational scalability.
Program Outcomes
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Improved Vendor Relationships: A competitive supplier marketplace strengthened collaboration while reducing dependency on any single agency.
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Expanded Workforce Flexibility: Broadened clinician access through new supply pools, including internal agency resources, local 1099 physicians, and traditional locum agencies.
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Enterprise Workforce Visibility: Executive dashboards and advanced analytics provided leadership with real-time insights into workforce spend and utilization.
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Operational Standardization: System-wide processes improved consistency and governance across facilities.
By introducing vendor neutrality and centralized workforce governance, the health system transformed a fragmented staffing environment into a more transparent, competitive, and resilient workforce ecosystem, strengthening both cost control and clinician access.
Executive Takeaway
Healthcare leaders can no longer afford to expose locums programs to vendor concentration risk. With Trio Workforce Solutions, you gain the assurance of governance, the power of neutrality, and the confidence of broad market access.
A senior healthcare technology leader said this about partnering with Trio:
“Trio delivered a tightly integrated solution with our Workday ERP platform, transforming our labor-intensive processes into a streamlined process with zero-touch invoicing, a single point of entry for HR demographics, and greatly improved visibility and analytics.”
—Vice President, Information Technology
Is your locums program positioned for resilience, or dependent on a single source of supply? Fill out the form below and let’s discuss how vendor neutrality and pricing governance can strengthen your locums workforce strategy for the long term.
