In MGMA's Nov. 3, 2026 poll of 186 medical groups, 44% reported an administrative vacancy open for less than three months, and 16% reported one open for six months or longer. About four in five groups had at least one open administrative job.
MGMA runs its Stat poll each week, and its HR Insights team published the staffing results on Nov. 4, 2026. The poll asked how long the longest open administrative job had been vacant. It then collected comments on which jobs stayed open and why.
How long administrative jobs stay open
Of the 186 applicable respondents, 19% had no open administrative job. The other 81% (MGMA's own wording is "about four in five") had at least one. The table below shows how long the longest vacancy had lasted.
| Longest administrative vacancy | Share of 186 respondents |
|---|---|
| Less than 30 days | 18% |
| One to three months | 26% |
| Three to six months | 20% |
| Six months or longer | 16% |
| No open administrative job | 19% |
Source: MGMA Stat poll, Nov. 3, 2026, 186 applicable respondents. MGMA notes the shares total 99% because of rounding.
Add the two longest bands and 36% of groups had a job open for three months or more. A vacancy of that length covers a full quarter of unfilled work in a billing office, a front desk or a manager's chair.
Which administrative jobs go unfilled
MGMA read the follow-up comments and counted the jobs respondents named. Front-office and leadership openings each made up about two in five of the jobs named.
The mix changes with vacancy length. Among jobs open one to three months, nearly half involved reception, scheduling or phone work. Among the longest-open jobs, 8 of the 14 jobs mentioned were leadership positions. Reception jobs lead the shorter vacancies, and leadership jobs lead the longest.
MGMA did not report how many jobs the comments covered in total, so the two-in-five shares describe the mix of jobs named and not the share of all groups.
Why the jobs stay open
More than half of the vacancy comments cited the applicant pool: too few candidates, missing qualifications or too little experience. About one in four cited pay. Roughly one in seven mentioned location. Respondents could name more than one obstacle.
Groups with no open job reported the same problem. About two in three of their comments recalled difficulty finding qualified applicants in the past. One respondent with a receptionist job open longer than six months wrote that "pay is too low to be competitive with other industries." A billing leader wrote that "WFH has become an expectation in RCM."
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics gives the wider hiring picture. Its September 2026 jobs report, released Oct. 2, 2026, showed healthcare adding about 17,000 jobs, against an average of 33,000 per month over the prior year. Ambulatory healthcare services added about 13,000 of those jobs.
Pay and staffing data from earlier 2026 polls
MGMA's earlier polls show the same pressure at the front line. In May 2026, 56% of respondents said medical assistant hiring had become harder, and 29% reported higher staff turnover than in 2025. In a July 2026 poll, 63% said their support-staff-to-physician ratio was unchanged.
Pay moved less than the hiring difficulty did. MGMA's 2026 DataDive Management and Staff Compensation report put the 2025 rise in median medical assistant pay at 4.3% and in median receptionist pay at 4.8%. In a September 2025 poll, 64% of respondents planned a base-pay increase of 1% to 3% for staff in 2026. MGMA's Chief Customer Success Officer Andy Swanson has said that raises in that range across the board may not keep top performers, as paraphrased in the Nov. 4 article.
The July poll counted budgeted staff ratios, and the November poll counted open seats. A ratio that holds steady on paper does not show how many of those seats are filled.
Automation and added duties
MGMA titled its article "Not everything can be automated." In a June 2026 poll, more than two-thirds of practice leaders said they had not redesigned a role or adjusted staffing with AI. The remaining 26% had.
The work that does not leave lands on current staff. In a September 2026 MGMA poll, more than half of practice leaders reported adding at least four functions to their own jobs in two years. In an October 2026 poll on portal messages, 71% said someone was designated to handle other providers' inbox messages.
For a practice manager building the 2027 budget, the MGMA numbers give a baseline for planning. If 36% of groups carry a vacancy of three months or longer, a plan that assumes a 30-day fill time is likely to miss. MGMA's DataDive pay figures of 4.3% and 4.8% mark what the market paid for the two largest front-line roles in 2025.
Sources
- MGMA HR Insights, Not everything can be automated: 4 in 5 medical groups report open admin jobs, Nov. 4, 2026
- MGMA HR Insights, Medical assistants: tackling practices' worst hiring problem, May 20, 2026
- MGMA HR Insights, Stabilized but not solved: staff turnover in 2026, May 28, 2026
- MGMA, Stable staff-to-physician ratios might conceal real strain in your practice, July 8, 2026
- MGMA, 2026 MGMA DataDive Management and Staff Compensation, 2026
- MGMA, Budgeting 2026 staff pay for medical practice, Sept. 10, 2025
- MGMA Operations Management Insights, AI is slowly redesigning work rather than replacing workers, June 3, 2026
- MGMA, Congratulations, you're now Chief Everything Officer, Sept. 17, 2026
- MGMA Patient Experience Insights, Who owns the inbox? How medical groups can redesign portal message work, Oct. 28, 2026
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, The Employment Situation, September 2026, Oct. 2, 2026
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