Hospital staffing: Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
Maintain safe, reliable patient care with the right hospital staffing solution. Acute care facilities trust Nursa to cover those last-minute needs and cover gaps in the schedule.
With access to high-quality on-demand nurses and other clinicians through Nursa, you can reduce reliance on overtime, support your in-house staff, and avoid costly agency contracts.
Acute care leaders often wonder how to fold Nursa into their staffing strategy. This FAQ addresses key questions hospital leaders often ask about our staffing solutions.
About hospital/acute care
1. What is the meaning of acute care?
In the U.S., acute care can be defined by both the medical setting and the seriousness of a patient's condition (i.e., patient acuity).
- Acute care settings: Hospitals, trauma centers, long-term acute care hospitals (LTACHs), and emergency departments
- Patient condition: Serious illness or injury requiring 24/7 monitoring
2. What does an acute care facility provide?
An acute care facility provides time-sensitive, intensive treatment for patients with serious medical needs. Except in LTACHs, the care provided is typically short-term until the patient’s acuity level reduces.
Acute care in hospitals or trauma centers focuses on addressing illnesses or injuries that threaten life or limb and stabilizing patients until they can either be discharged home or to a skilled rehabilitation facility.
3. What are long-term acute care hospitals?
LTACHs are slightly different in that they provide high-acuity care long term. Examples of acute care provided in these types of facilities include:
- Neurological care for traumatic brain injuries
- Ventilator management
- Complex comorbidities
- Wound care for non-healing wounds, extensive burns, infections, etc.
4. What is the role of an acute care nurse?
Acute care nursing involves close—if not continuous—patient monitoring, frequent assessments, medication administration, care coordination, communication with a multidisciplinary team, careful documentation, and family education.
PRN medical staffing models for hospitals
5. What is per diem medical staffing, and why is it important?
Per diem medical staffing is a flexible, responsive, and adaptable staffing model. It’s important because hospitals need to balance labor costs effectively with safe staffing ratios.
This staffing model provides a solution: Hospitals can scale staffing precisely by augmenting the roster as needed without overcommitting.
6. How do PRN clinicians support hospital staffing needs?
Hospitals and other acute care facility settings can have swift changes in patient census. Safe staffing ratios are critical in acute care settings, which means staffing levels must be able to scale up—or down—to meet patient needs.
PRN clinicians are experienced, vetted, and accustomed to adapting rapidly to different work settings, filling the need, and going home without a future commitment at the end of a shift.
7. How does per diem staffing provide cost-efficient medical staffing?
Precision staffing means having no more and no less than the qualified clinicians you need, regardless of census.
Considering the overhead labor costs of your in-house staff roster, is it cost-efficient to have more employees than you usually need?
Unlike your employees, contracted 1099 per diem clinicians are only paid an hourly wage. They are not entitled to paid time off, health insurance, or any other employee benefits.
Maintain a healthy in-house clinician pool that can manage the baseline staffing needs, and then contract per diem medical staff when census spikes. This keeps your staffing ratios safe in times of high patient intake and lets you return to baseline when census invariably swings the other way.
8. How can hospitals reduce staff overtime by using PRN clinicians?
Overtime is costly for hospitals, not only financially (time and a half isn’t cheap), but also emotionally. Acute care nurses are under relentless pressure on shift and need downtime to decompress and manage their personal lives. Frequent use of overtime can have a backlash effect: you may cover the shift, but that nurse may be closer to burnout, may be experiencing compassion fatigue, or may be exhausted enough to make an error.
What if, instead of cajoling your already tired acute care nurses to work a double or pick up a weekend shift, you had a PRN acute care nurse pick up the shift?
Hospitals can save on the financial and emotional costs of overtime by sourcing PRN medical clinicians to cover schedule gaps and fill shift call outs.
Hospital shift coverage & shortage reduction
9. How does Nursa help hospitals fill shift gaps quickly?
Nursa’s PRN staffing platform makes per diem clinicians more accessible to hospitals than ever. Facilities using Nursa post their open shifts, and local nurses and nursing assistants can request to fill them.
This live stream shift posting facilitates rapid shift fills and emergency shift coverage.
Facilities that use Nursa fill 3 times as many open per diem shifts, on average, compared to trying to fill the shifts themselves.
10. How can Nursa reduce staffing shortages for hospitals?
Nursa can directly impact hospital staffing in times of shortage by providing access to a large pool of medical clinicians to fill individual shifts.
This talent pool is larger than what typical recruitment strategies can access because it includes registered nurses, licensed practical/vocational nurses, certified nursing assistants, certified medication aides, caregivers, and respiratory therapists who may not be actively looking for full-time employment.
Recruitment for an experienced RN takes hospitals approximately 3 months! 90 days is a long time to manage staffing at a deficit of one or more positions.
By attacking scheduling issues on a smaller scale, Nursa is helping hospitals fill staffing gaps and reducing the burden on in-house clinicians.
It’s important to note that Nursa does not charge hire-away fees.
This means that when a hospital or LTACH wants to recruit a PRN acute care nurse who’s been filling shifts reliably from the platform to their internal roster, it’s as easy as making the offer to the nurse. Many facilities are using the Nursa platform to fulfill two needs simultaneously:
- Filling shifts
- Finding and directly hiring talent
11. Can Nursa provide acute staffing for hospital executives managing surges?
Yes. Nursa provides staffing solutions and support for hospitals by connecting them with nurses and CNAs with experience in several acute care settings. For example, hundreds of hospitals post open PRN shifts regularly to the platform for staffing needs in:
- Emergency departments
- Intensive care units
- Telemetry units
- Medical-surgical units
Compliance, reliability & trust
12. Are Nursa clinicians credentialed and verified?
Yes. Nursa is Joint Commission-accredited and conducts thorough license verification and background checks on all medical clinicians who join the platform. Here’s a brief summary of the process.
Clinician license and credential verification:
- Verification with state boards of nursing when clinicians first upload their license (required)
- Re-verification when a clinician requests a PRN shift
Clinician background checks:
- Screening against the Office of Inspector General (OIG), System for Award Management (SAM), List of Excluded Individuals/Entities (LEIE), and National Sex Offender Registry upon clinician sign-up
- Federal background check and local state-level checks upon PRN shift request
Failure to pass these background checks results in an immediate ban from the platform. Learn more about nurse credentialing.
13. How does Nursa compare to a reliable medical staffing agency?
Nursa is not a staffing agency; it’s a staffing platform, and there are several points that emphasize the distinction:
- Nursa’s pricing is a pay-as-you-go model. There are no long-term contracts, hidden fees, start-up fees, or the like. You pay for the shifts that are filled by clinicians using the platform.
- Nursa does not provide recruitment services, nor does it charge hire-away fees. It creates the connection for facilities and clinicians to fill scheduling gaps and shift call outs. If a hospital decides to offer in-house employment to the clinician, that is entirely between the two parties.
- Nursa does not employ medical staff. All clinicians using the platform operate as independent contractors (1099 tax status).
- Nursa does not impose quotas on clinicians. All nurses and medical professionals using the platform are free to pick up shifts as often or as seldom as they like.
- Nursa does not impose quotas on facilities. Over 2,500 facilities are on the Nursa platform, and each uses Nursa only when needed.
14. How does Nursa ensure hospital facility support services?
Nursa provides flexible support for any issues that hospitals may have. Digital support hours are Monday through Sunday, 6 a.m. - 10 p.m. (MT).
The online support team mainly helps facilities with common troubleshooting questions and app support, whereas our local operations teams provide on-the-ground support to hospitals and healthcare facilities with staffing concerns.
Technology & workforce management
15. Can Nursa integrate with schedule management for hospitals?
Yes! Automate your facility’s scheduling process by integrating Nursa with your existing tools and save time by managing your workforce all in one place.
Nursa integrates with top scheduling tools, including Covr, StaffLion, Dropstat, Maple, and more.
Learn more about integrating Nursa into your schedule management system here.
16. How does Nursa provide facility visibility to clinicians?
Nursa enhances facility visibility to clinicians in three distinct ways.
- Nursa Facility Directory: Nursa features facility profiles with key facility details. Clinicians can search open PRN shifts on the platform by facility. Claim your facility profile and add a picture to garner more clinician attention.
- Nursa Push Notifications: Acute care facilities post PRN shifts to the platform in real time. Clinicians in the area receive notifications about new available shifts up for grabs.
- Nursa Best Facility Awards: The platform encourages clinicians to rate facilities and facilities to rate clinicians, which creates a feedback loop of accountability and reliability. Based on clinician ratings, Nursa awards badges that are displayed on the winning facilities’ profiles and help attract talent.
Learn more about Nursa’s Best Facility Awards here.
17. How does Nursa support healthcare workforce management?
Nursa’s PRN medical staffing supports healthcare workforce management by helping facilities balance labor costs with clinician workloads.
Maintaining adequate staffing levels is the best retention strategy.
Ensure your healthcare workforce feels supported and safe so they can provide quality care to patients.
Leadership & administration
18. How can hospital executives track staffing cost savings?
Over 2,500 hospitals and healthcare facilities are using the Nursa platform for staffing solutions. Hospital and acute care facility administrators don’t have to worry about invoice surprises straining financial staffing resources. One of the main benefits is our transparent pricing model.
- Free shift posting
- Payment only for completed shifts
- Control of shift pricing
- No hidden fees
- No surprises on invoices
Securely manage invoices, track payments, and gain real-time visibility into your account status, all in one place. Nursa's Billing features help facilities reduce paperwork, simplify financial workflows, and make flexible payments via ACH, credit card, or bank transfer.
19. Why should acute care hospitals choose Nursa for staffing support?
Nursa conducts thorough credential verification and background checks on all clinicians using the platform. Furthermore, it has a talent pool of over 400,000 clinicians nationwide.
It’s free to post shifts, and you only pay for completed shifts.
Who doesn’t want an easier way to find the acute care nurses you need when you need them?
20. How can hospitals improve clinician recruitment through Nursa?
There are two crucial ways hospitals can use Nursa to improve their recruitment efforts:
- By using Nursa to keep your staffing ratios safe—nurses talk, and word gets around
- By establishing relationships with PRN clinicians in your community—one of them may be looking for the right fit for an in-house hospital job.
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