Technology owned by a competitor won’t get your nurses placed the fastest. Only vendor-neutral solutions will.
In today’s world of healthcare nurse staffing, success is all about speed. Hospitals can’t serve patients and staffing agencies can’t generate revenue until the nurse or other clinician has been placed at the bedside. Making that placement quickly and easily, however, hinges on the tools and vendor management technology used. Here, vendor-neutral options significantly outperform those owned by a Managed Staffing Provider (MSP) or competing agency.
The pandemic has made success in staffing placement all the more urgent: Nursing vacancy rates have doubled or more in some places, even as more beds are occupied than during the previous height of the pandemic. Hospitalizations increased 500% just this past summer alone, according to The New York Times.
MSPs claim to solve this problem, of course. They say they can connect agency supply to hospital demand in the fastest and most efficient way possible. However, any agency forced to work through an MSP-owned Vendor Management System (VMS) 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.
So, it’s no surprise that an overwhelming 82.14% of agencies said they prefer not to work with VMS technology that is “owned by another staffing company.”
In Part I of this article series on why vendor-neutral technology is the business-friendly solution for staffing agencies, we focus on strengthening the client relationship and technology consideration. And in Part II, we’ll delve into conflict of interest and operational efficiencies when it comes to selecting a VMS solution.
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You can focus your efforts better and strengthen client relationships.
MSP-owned VMS technology withholds (or simply doesn’t collect) key information because it’s not in the best interest of the MSP to highlight or disseminate that data. A vendor-neutral solution, by contrast, will shine a light into all the dark corners of the staffing process, which enables agencies to make better decisions. For example, you can see if candidates have already applied for a given role or not, so you can identify orders where there’s little to no competition. Or you can pull out orders with the least number of documents required for easier placements.
That kind of information isn’t just good for agencies; it’s good for their hospital clients too. Being able to run informative reports for clients – “You got 40 submissions today, with 23 interviews and eight offers” – strengthens relationships because the client can see firsthand how the agency is working hard for them.
Get best-in-class technology delivered by teams whose sole focus is tech.
Staffing agencies work on margins that force them to focus on volume and on recruiting, not on hiring tech companies or in-house staff to work on technology. So, groups that develop their own VMS tools will always treat the technology as a secondary priority, even if it’s their own. By contrast, a pureplay tech company will continuously reinvest in ensuring their technology is the best it can be, because the technology is their product.
In turn, that translates into improved user experience, better functionality and ultimately a more effective staffing resource. For instance, if the agency using the VMS wants to build an API between its applicant tracking system, job boards and the VMS to reduce manual labor inputting data, a vendor-neutral company is going to be willing to invest in that effort. In the end, the agency and the tech company share the same agenda: helping the agency successfully place candidates.
Don’t miss out on Part II of this article coming out next week!