🩺 Locum Tenens Engagement Pricing Calculator
Locum tenens is the high-service, high-overhead corner of healthcare staffing: your agency covers malpractice, credentialing, travel, housing, and per diem, and every one of those dollars has to come back through the bill rate. This calculator, straight from Dee's How To Charge workbook, rolls the provider's pay and every locum-specific cost into one number, your true cost per hour, then prices markups from thin to elite on top of it. If your bill rate is below that floor, you are paying to work. Run your numbers once free; the $27 one-time unlock keeps every section live forever and includes the Excel workbook.
Section 1: Provider type & base compensation
Reference table of typical locum pay rates by provider type. Use it to sanity-check the rate you enter in Section 2; the active engagement below drives all the math.
Typical $150 to $300/hr. Family Med, Internal Med, Hospitalist.
Typical $200 to $450/hr. Cardiology, Orthopedics, Psychiatry.
Typical $250 to $500+/hr. General Surgery, Orthopedic Surgery.
Typical $125 to $250/hr. Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist.
Typical $75 to $150/hr. Primary Care, Acute Care, Psych NP.
Typical $70 to $140/hr. Surgery Assist, ER, Ortho.
Typical $100 to $200/hr. General, Oral Surgery.
Typical $60 to $120/hr. Behavioral Health, Telepsych.
Section 2: Your active locum engagement
Enter details for the provider you are actively pricing.
What you pay the provider.
Standard locum assignment: 8 to 26 weeks.
Section 3: Locum-specific cost components
These are costs UNIQUE to locums that do not appear in standard contract staffing. One-time items are per engagement; housing, car, and per diem are per week.
Annual premium divided by number of assignments. Occurrence-based preferred over claims-made.
Required if a claims-made policy is used. Can be 1x to 3x the annual premium. Budget for it.
Credentialing service plus your staff time. Hospital privileging can take 60 to 120 days.
State-specific DEA registration check. Required for prescribing providers.
Multi-state if compact, per state if not. Some states require a separate locum license.
FACIS, OIG, SAM, state background, 10-panel. Clinical-grade screening required.
Round trip plus a mid-assignment trip home. Budget $800 to $2,500 depending on distance.
Furnished apartment or extended stay. Budget $1,800 to $3,500/week by market.
Car rental or ride allowance. $400 to $800/week typical.
GSA rate by location (meals and incidentals). MUST stay within the GSA max or the overage is taxable.
Some facilities pay orientation, some don't. If unpaid, this is YOUR cost at the provider rate.
Leave at 0: burden is auto-calculated below from your Burden Builder percentage. If 1099, burden is lower but compliance risk is higher.
Section 4: Burden assumption
Copy from your Burden Builder tab. Applied to total engagement provider pay.
Section 5: Your custom bill rate
Blank in the source workbook. Enter the rate you plan to quote; at $0 the custom row shows the full negative cost.
Estimates for planning, not financial advice. Rates, premiums, and burden numbers are the workbook's guidance ranges; your market and your carriers decide the real ones.
Does this resonate?
Locum staffing is the premium end of the market. Build the agency behind it.
If placing physicians and advanced practice providers sounds like your kind of business, the platform can turn it into a real plan: positioning, licensing checklist, and the week-by-week path from first credentialed provider to a repeatable placement engine.
Build my launch plan free →Good questions about this math
What do locum tenens providers get paid, and what does the agency bill?
The workbook's reference table runs from $60 to $120 an hour for a psychologist up to $250 to $500+ for a surgeon, with general physicians at $150 to $300 and CRNAs at $125 to $250. The agency bills well above the pay rate because the bill rate has to recover burden, malpractice, credentialing, travel, housing, and per diem on top of pay. That is why the calculator anchors to total cost per hour, not the pay rate.
How do locum agencies price an engagement?
Full-service agencies roll every engagement cost into a single true cost per hour: total provider pay, burden, one-time costs (malpractice, tail, credentialing, licensing, background, travel, orientation) and weekly recurring costs (housing, car, per diem). Then they mark that floor up. The calculator prices 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, and 50 percent markups and shows gross profit per hour, per week, and per engagement for each.
What markup is typical on a locum engagement?
The sheet labels 20 percent as thin, 25 percent as the floor, 30 percent as the target, and 35 to 50 percent as strong to elite. Because the markup applies to your fully loaded cost rather than the pay rate, even the target tier can look modest next to the pay rate spread; the point is that it is real margin after every locum cost is covered.
Who pays for malpractice insurance and tail coverage?
In the full-service model this calculator prices, the agency does. It budgets an occurrence-based premium per engagement (occurrence is preferred over claims-made) plus tail coverage, which is required when a claims-made policy is used and can run one to three times the annual premium. Both sit in the fixed cost line so they are recovered through the bill rate.
Are locum tenens providers W2 or 1099?
Typically 1099 independent contractors, which is why this sheet's burden line is a single percentage you copy from the Burden Builder tab rather than a full employer payroll stack. If you run providers as W2, burden is higher; if 1099, burden is lower but the compliance risk of misclassification is on you. Also mind the per diem: staying within the GSA maximum keeps it tax-free, and any overage is taxable.
Do I get the Excel version?
Yes. The $27 unlock includes the standalone Locum Tenens Engagement workbook from Dee's How To Charge master, plus the START HERE guide tab, yours to download and keep.
More calculators
🧠
Think Tank Pricing Calculator
Price a curated leaders' think tank two ways: as a client pipeline machine and as paid recurring membership revenue.
🧭
Goals & Financial Roadmap Calculator
Reverse-engineer your 10-year revenue goal into a Year 1 target, lines of business, and monthly milestones.
📊
Budget & Revenue Simulator
Plug in your roles on billing and overhead; see your real weekly, monthly, and annual profit.