Locum assignments are usually offered on short notice for a defined window. A license takes two to four months. Those two facts do not fit together unless you have solved for them in advance.
Licensing speculatively
The working model for a locum PA is to hold licenses in states you expect to work in, before you have an assignment there. That means paying for and maintaining licenses that are not currently earning — which is a real cost, and the right way to think about it is as capacity rather than overhead.
Choosing which states
Where the demand is, obviously. But two other factors deserve weight.
Renewal cost and cycle, because you are carrying these between assignments. Missouri’s 8 renewal and Illinois’s 0 a year are cheap to hold. A state with a 00 biennial renewal is a different proposition for a license you may use once.
Compact membership, which will matter from 2027. A license in a member state may eventually do the work of several.
The parts that do not travel
Each assignment still needs its own collaboration or supervision arrangement with a named physician at that site, and controlled-substance registration is per state. Holding the license removes the longest lead time, not all of them.
Temporary licenses
Several states offer one, which can bridge a gap when an assignment arrives before the permanent license does. They carry their own fee and their own limits — useful as a bridge, not as a strategy.
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