How to choose the right healthcare staffing platform

Many facilities are having significant challenges with healthcare workforce management.

Here’s where healthcare staffing platforms come in.

Choosing the right healthcare staffing platform is an essential step for schedulers looking to address shortages, burnout, high turnover, scheduling inefficiencies, and financial pressures. 

If your facility is facing any of these challenges, keep reading. This article includes various tips and a detailed checklist to help you know what to look for in a healthcare staffing platform.

What is a healthcare staffing platform?

A healthcare staffing platform is a digital service or application that connects healthcare professionals, like nurses and doctors, with hospitals, clinics, or other facilities that need temporary or permanent staff. These platforms help streamline the staffing process, making it easier and faster for both healthcare professionals and facilities to find the right fit. 

Healthcare staffing platforms may offer different types of flexible staffing solutions, such as per diem, travel nursing, or permanent placements. The platform you ultimately choose to adopt will depend on the type of staffing challenges you need to address.

Benefits of healthcare staffing platforms

Here, you see some of the advantages these platforms bring:

• Healthcare staffing platforms can ensure or facilitate compliance with staffing regulations and credentialing. 
• These platforms help solve the nursing shortage and reduce financial pressures.
• They typically offer greater automation for scheduling your clinicians. 
• Platforms provide solutions for scheduling inefficiencies.
• Many companies are transparent with their fees and other charges.
• Many offer the possibility of mobile app access.

Platform types

Check out the main types of healthcare staffing platforms:

• Per diem marketplaces: Last-minute call outs and patient census surges are inevitable and often unpredictable. Per diem staffing platforms allow facilities to cover emergency staffing needs on short notice. It also allows healthcare facilities to offer internal staff greater flexibility. This flexible staffing option helps facilities quickly fill open shifts without long-term commitments.
• Travel nurse solutions: These solutions are for facilities that need to fill larger schedule gaps—weeks or months—by sourcing professionals who are open to working in other cities, states, or even countries.
• Full-time recruiting: For those managers needing to fill vacancies due to turnover or staff retirement, this type of platform helps recruit staff for long-term or permanent positions.

What to look for in a healthcare staffing solution

Choosing the right healthcare staffing solution is not always simple. As a facility manager, you have many things to consider before making your choice. 

The following checklist can help you consider the most important aspects when choosing the best healthcare staffing platform for your facility’s needs.

Specialty coverage

Not all staffing gaps are created equal. Whether you need an ICU RN, a med-surg CNA, or someone comfortable in memory care, your platform should be able to source clinicians with the right experience. The best platforms allow you to find professionals matched to your unit’s specific clinical demands.

Be sure that the platform can meet key coverage questions:

• Can I find the healthcare professionals my facility needs (RNs, LPNs/LVNs, CNAs, etc.)?
• Is it possible to source a specialized workforce (med-surg, ER, ICU, telemetry, etc.)?

Candidate pool

When shifts go unfilled, patient care suffers. A large, active candidate pool increases your chances of finding available clinicians—fast. Look for platforms that serve your region and offer high fill rates, even during weekends or last-minute call-offs. Here are some questions you should be able to answer:

• What is the number of clinicians on the platform?
• Does the platform serve my location?
• What is the average time to fill shifts? Will the platform work for filling last-minute gaps?

Labor quality

Quality matters just as much as availability. The right platform should offer features that help you confidently staff your facility with professionals who are qualified, dependable, and patient-ready. Look out for some of these key features:

• Does the platform offer license verification?
• Does it offer background checks?
• Does it help facilities comply with staffing regulations in other ways?
• Does it offer any training or facilitate onboarding?
• Does it offer a clinician rating system?

Reliability

How often shifts get filled—and what happens when someone cancels—can make or break your scheduling plans. Look for reliable platforms that offer transparency around fill rates, cancellations, and clinician attendance by asking the following questions:

• How reliable is the platform for filling shifts?
• How are call outs, cancellations, and no-shows treated?

Platform features and functionality

Features like automated scheduling, credential tracking, timekeeping, and messaging can help streamline your workflow and reduce administrative overhead. Understand how well the platform matches your scheduling workflows by asking these questions:

• How does shift management work? Is it automated or manual? 
• Is there a time-tracking feature?
• How does clinician messaging and communication work?
• Does it have automatic scheduling options?
• Is there a streamlined system for invoicing and bill payment?
• What reporting options does the platform have?
• How are credentials checked, and how often?
• Does the platform include integrations with popular scheduling platforms?
• Does the platform have a mobile app? Does it allow cross-device access?

Platform pricing

No one likes surprise fees. A platform should clearly outline what you’ll pay and when. Look for transparent pricing models that align with your staffing needs with the following considerations:

• What are the pricing models offered?
• Does the company promise pricing transparency, or could there be hidden fees?
• What billing options does the platform offer?

Contract terms

When your patient census can change at the drop of a hat, staffing flexibility is key. Some platforms require minimum usage, while others lock you into long-term contracts. Consider how easy it is to start, pause, or cancel your account. For any platform, ask the following questions:

• Are there minimum usage requirements?
• Is it easy to cancel the service/account?

The best platforms let you scale staffing up or down as your needs change.

Customer support 

• What type of customer support is offered (chatbots, e-mail, in-person, etc.)? 
• Is customer service provided 24/7?

When something goes wrong (and it will), you’ll want responsive support. Look for platforms that offer 24/7 customer service through multiple channels so you’re never left in the dark when you need help the most.

Regulatory compliance

A good platform should help you meet local, state, and federal staffing requirements. Be sure to ask the following questions to verifty that the platform keeps you audit-ready.

• Does it offer compliance with local regulations, like CDPH 530?
• Is there PBJ reporting data available?

Do you need some recommendations? Keep reading for the top platforms available and more tips on choosing the best healthcare staffing platform.

Top 3 healthcare staffing platforms

Here are three healthcare staffing platforms that provide a range of solutions to help facilities fill workforce gaps effectively. Each offers distinct services designed for different staffing needs, from short-term shift coverage to long-term and full-time positions. 

The following platforms link reliable healthcare professionals with hospitals, clinics, and other care centers nationwide. They offer advanced tools to simplify the staffing process, improve efficiency, and ensure the right fit for each role. Whether you're looking for per diem, travel nurses, or full-time staff, these platforms can solve a variety of needs. 

1. Nursa: Per diem staffing platform
2. Aya Healthcare: Travel nursing agency
3. Healthcare Staffing Pros: Full-time staffing agency

Per diem staffing platform: Nursa

Nursa is a per diem nurse staffing platform that enhances patient care by uniting nurses seeking flexible work with facilities facing staffing shortages. We may be biased, but there are a few reasons why we recommend the platform for nurse schedulers, managers, and DONs looking to fill staffing gaps. 

Nursa covers more than 31 states around the country and is trusted by more than 2,400 facilities and 350,000 per diem clinicians. Healthcare facilities can easily post shifts, review requesting clinicians, and select the best fit for the shift. With robust background checks and clear credential matching, facilities have everything they need to staff their open shifts with the confidence that their patients will receive quality care.

Nursa’s pricing model is simple and transparent. You control the rate for each shift and only pay when shifts are completed at your facility. This means that facilities can focus on filling shifts without worrying about hidden fees or surprises on the invoice.

Travel agency staffing company: Aya Healthcare

Aya Healthcare is the largest travel nursing agency in the United States, connecting registered nurses with temporary job assignments in different cities and states. This company aims to fill urgent or short-term staffing needs at hospitals, clinics, or long-term care facilities. The company offers a simple and intuitive mobile app for users and currently has more than 23,000 job postings.  

Full-time staffing firm: Healthcare Staffing Pros

Healthcare Staffing Pros, or HSP, is a healthcare staffing company that specializes in placing 

qualified professionals in full-time and temp-to-perm roles across the U.S. They partner with hospitals, clinics, and other healthcare facilities to find the right long-term fits. Known for their transparent pricing structure, Healthcare Staffing Pros makes it easier for employers to budget confidently, with no hidden fees or surprise costs.

How to select the right staffing platform for your facility

To summarize, here are the most important aspects to help you choose the best platform:

1. Determine your staffing needs
2. Analyze the platform features your facility needs 
3. Check for integrations with scheduling platforms
4. Test out platforms on a trial basis
5. Select the best platform for your needs

Easy, right? Follow the steps above to choose the ideal healthcare staffing platform for your facility.

Explore more on Nursa to staff smarter

Do you want to learn more about Nursa and what we offer? Explore the ways Nursa provides healthcare facilities with flexible, reliable, and customizable staffing solutions.