The locum tenens market is booming—and breaking. Despite topping $10 billion, only 30% of locums sourcing is handled through centralized technology. The rest is an email-heavy patchwork of agencies, spreadsheets, and vague rate negotiations that leave health systems overpaying, understaffed, and without the data needed to make fair, market-aligned decisions.
Hallmark Health Care Solutions thinks it can fix that. The Workforce Intelligence and Enablement vendor has rolled out Locum Tenens Vendor Management inside its Total Workforce Vendor Management System (VMS), aiming to bring order, visibility, and real competition to one of healthcare’s most opaque spend categories.
It’s a big swing—and one the industry increasingly needs.
The Locums Problem: Big Market, Bigger Blind Spots
Healthcare systems face an almost perfect storm in staffing:
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A projected provider shortage of 100,000+ by 2028
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9–10% annual growth in locum demand
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And an eye-opening trend: 44% of physicians who changed jobs in 2024 went locum, up from 28% just two years earlier
Add the rural-care crisis—where 10% of physicians support 20% of the population—and locums shift from convenience to lifeline.
Yet the mechanics behind that lifeline remain fragmented. Agencies, health systems, and administrators routinely navigate inconsistent pay packages, sluggish communication, and little visibility into quality or cost performance. Without unified benchmarks or standardized workflows, the result is predictable: rising wage inflation, misaligned incentives, and a procurement landscape that feels more like an auction than a strategy.
It’s no surprise that 88% of health systems report escalating concern about locums costs.
Hallmark’s Pitch: Neutral, Transparent, Data-Rich
Hallmark’s new module introduces a vendor-neutral marketplace—a notable departure from agency-controlled workflows. The platform brings real-time cost, performance, utilization, and credentialing visibility directly to health systems.
In practice, that means:
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Centralized sourcing of locum physicians across departments and facilities
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Automated vendor workflows and standardized rate structures
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Objective comparisons of agencies and providers
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Real-time analytics for spend, fill rates, and quality metrics
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And better negotiating leverage through transparent benchmarks
For rural hospitals and critical access facilities—where a single physician gap can disrupt entire service lines—Hallmark’s ability to centralize access and reduce service disruptions could be particularly meaningful. These markets often lack both bargaining power and market data; a neutral marketplace levels the field.
From Procurement to Partnership: A Shift the Market Needed
Hallmark’s CEO Bharat Sundaram frames the launch as a corrective to years of opacity:
“Health systems are seeking solutions that ensure fair market value and foster transparency, trust, and alignment across all stakeholders.”
That emphasis on incentives—and aligning those incentives with actual performance—is where Hallmark has some advantage. Its tenure in physician compensation, benchmarking, and workforce automation gives it a foundation many traditional VMS systems lack. The new module leverages that expertise to address a critical pain point: the disconnect between what systems pay and what they get.
It’s also a strategic move at a moment when agencies themselves are navigating higher provider wage expectations and tighter financial margins. A neutral marketplace doesn’t eliminate agency value, but it does push the ecosystem toward more consistent, market-validated decision-making.
The outcome? Fewer surprises, fewer inflated rates, better forecasting, and a more rational marketplace for temporary physician labor.
Why This Matters Now
Healthcare staffing is entering a recalibration phase. Demand for temporary providers is rising sharply, but the mechanisms to manage that demand have not kept pace. Many health systems still rely on manual processes to manage one of their largest contingent labor budgets.
Compared to travel nursing—where vendor management matured years ago—locum tenens remains behind the curve. But with physician mobility increasing and younger clinicians gravitating toward flexible work models, the segment can’t remain a technology laggard.
Hallmark’s entry, particularly from a vendor already entrenched in workforce intelligence, signals that the locums space may be next in line for modernization. If the platform does what it promises, it could become part of a broader shift toward data-driven contingent physician management.
And with locum costs rising faster than reimbursements for many systems, any tool that makes this market more predictable is likely to get attention.
The Bottom Line: The Locums Marketplace Grows Up
Hallmark’s Locum Tenens Vendor Management module isn’t just another feature drop; it’s a response to an industry hitting a breaking point.
The market no longer needs more agencies—it needs more alignment, more visibility, and more control.
Hallmark is positioning its VMS as the connective tissue between health systems and the staffing ecosystem that supports them.
If the company delivers on its vision, health systems could finally bring the locums market into the same analytics-driven discipline applied to nursing, allied health, and non-clinical contingent labor.
In a $10B category growing nearly double digits every year, modernization isn’t optional—it’s overdue.
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