In today’s world of healthcare nurse staffing, success is all about speed, and making placements quickly and easily hinges on the tools and vendor management technology used.
While managed service providers claim they can connect agency supply to hospital demand in the fastest and most efficient way possible, any staffing firm forced to work through an MSP-owned vendor management system knows that’s not true. In fact, according to a survey of staffing agencies conducted by Hallmark Health Care Solutions, nearly three-quarters (70.37%) of agencies see less success when an MSP manages recruiting and placements with hospitals. And an overwhelming 82.14% said they prefer not to work with VMS technology that is “owned by another staffing company.”
The more successful alternative is a vendor-neutral solution created, implemented and maintained by a pure technology company that has no investment in the staffing function. In this situation, their sole business model is centered on provisioning technology, so their business incentive is exclusive to serving the agency rather than its own conflicting interests. That alignment of interests yields numerous benefits for the staffing agency.
Part I of this series on why vendor-neutral technology is the business-friendly solution for staffing agencies focused on strengthening the client relationship and technology consideration. Part 2 delves into conflict of interest and operational efficiencies when it comes to selecting a VMS solution.
Eliminate conflicts of interest. There are additional financial considerations that explain why agencies that develop their own VMS’s de-prioritize investments in them. A competitor-owned MSP, for example, is incented to place its own staffing resources first and foremost, even if they’re not the fastest, most cost-effective, or best qualified. Remember, if the MSP with the contractual relationship with the hospital doesn’t fill a significant portion of that hospital’s open needs internally, they will lose money. Thus, they need their own technology to give themselves advantage in the staffing process.
That inherent conflict of interest is why most agencies experience less success in placing candidates when going through an MSP. In turn, avoiding conflicts of interests makes more placements more likely to be successful.
PREMUM CONTENT: Global Staffing Company Survey 2021: Concerns about current and upcoming legislation
Reduce workload. In line with the previous point, competitor-owned technologies are not incented to make the staffing process easier for the other agencies that use their solutions. Increasing effort and difficulty often ends up being a feature, rather than a bug, of the experience.
A good example here is communication. A non-neutral solution, in pursuit of its own competitive advantage, wants to control both the flow of information and the nature of the agency-hospital relationship. A vendor-neutral solution simply has no interest one way or the other, but in line with the points made above – driving greater efficiencies and helping the agency be more successful – will focus on facilitating connections, not restricting them.
With a vendor-neutral technology, hospital hiring managers can put comments into the job order that get emailed directly to the agency. No one needs to pick up a phone, email, text, or otherwise hound someone for the information needed to make a successful placement. Instead of gatekeeping, the technology facilitates bidirectional communication between supply and demand. That, in turn, hastens how fast can clinicians get submitted, interviewed, and placed at the bedside.
More placements, more quickly. Eliminate risk of poaching, speed up the whole process, get paid sooner, and facilitate relationship-building: that’s the power of vendor-neutral technology in staffing relationships. The bottom-line is that a vendor-neutral solution is more likely to offer the features and functionality agencies need to have a better chance of placing people into open roles, and to do so faster than when they’re trying to work through a platform owned and operated by a competitor.