Nursefinders Inc. Signs Agreement With VHA Inc. to Become the Preferred Provider of Clinical Vendor Management Services (VMS) To Member Hospitals

• September 20, 2007
• Arlington, Texas

Nursefinders Inc., one of the nation’s largest providers of health care personnel, has signed an agreement with VHA Inc., the national health care alliance, to be the preferred provider of clinical vendor management services for VHA member hospitals, meaning Nursefinders will manage all outside staffing relationships that hospitals have and will submit a single bill to each hospital, simplifying accounting, management and growth of the activities.

“VHA member organizations, like hospitals nationwide, are facing a critical shortage of health care professionals, particularly in specialty areas,” said Amy Anthony, VHA’s vice president of supplier services. “While our nurse staffing suppliers typically provide great value in helping members meet workforce needs, managing all these separate relationships can be time consuming. Through Nursefinders’ Workforce Solutions programs, VHA members have access to services that can ultimately help them enhance their clinical and financial performance, but they can reduce administrative headaches.”

Anthony said that VHA chose Nursefinders based on factors such as market share, geographic service coverage, industry ratings for scope of services, service quality, innovation and financial standing. “We selected Nursefinders as our preferred supplier for clinical vendor management solutions because they have proven ability to deliver overall workforce cost savings while providing the highest caliber of personnel to VHA members. This was demonstrated through current rate of penetration and high customer satisfaction with VMS clients within the VHA membership,” said Anthony.

Bob Livonius, CEO of Nursefinders, commented, “We are proud to be recognized by VHA as the highest quality provider of full service staffing solutions in the U.S. Since the inception of Nursefinders Workforce Solutions four years ago, our program has grown into the nation’s largest health care VMS offering, with many satisfied, multi-year clients. Now, with our new agreement, VHA members are able to capture 100% of their supplemental staffing spend as credit to their VHA commitments.”

Under the terms of the three-year agreement, VHA members can contract with Nursefinders for VMS services for nurses and other health care professionals. These services and programs include free workforce management software along with dedicated clinical and administrative support. Monitoring of user results has shown that VHA hospitals are able to reduce administrative costs, reduce and/or control their total agency spending, increase predictability, and improve quality and service levels through Nursefinders Workforce Solutions. Members may also contract with Nursefinders for temporary needs such as per diem, short-term contract, travel and temp-to-perm health care personnel.

In addition, Club Staffing is a division of the Nursefinders family of companies and provides allied professionals radiology/imaging professionals, respiratory therapists, rehabilitation therapists (PT, OT, SLP), lab technicians, pharmacists and other allied professionals. Club Staffing has been a preferred provider for VHA members for more than four years.

According to Nursefinders’ COO, Staffing Division, Denise Deans-Graf, “Nearly every health care facility is looking for solutions, whether technology or consultant-based, to reduce or better control their nurse and allied health care staffing agency spending. Often, these solutions can be significantly more expensive than using the right amount of supplemental staff for census changes. Nursefinders Workforce Solutions have been proven to increase quality of agency nurses, while reducing total agency costs through more effective staffing strategies and temp-to-hire programs. We have expanded the model to now include allied health care skills and locum tenens physicians, in addition to nurses, with significant capacity in both per diem and travel placements.”

Deans-Graf also stated, “By acting as the gatekeeper to agency staffing requirements, we help insure that only qualified, oriented nurses are placed on the floor of the facility; we leverage a network of more than 150 subcontractors to guarantee fill rates; and our proprietary technology is effective in improving the order process, consolidating invoicing, imaging credentials for Joint Commission audits, and providing real-time reporting that enables us to manage to client-specific performance goals. It is truly an outsourcing solution to the management of supplemental labor costs.”

According to Anthony, the Nursefinders family of companies (Nursefinders, Club Staffing, Linde Healthcare, Kendall and Davis, National Healthcare Staffing and TVL brands) were recently acquired by Goldman Sachs, one of the largest investment companies in the world. She says “we are proud to have selected such a rapidly growing organization known for its broad range of high quality health care staffing services for our VHA members.”