Staffing Robot - Healthcare Staffing, Marketing and Technology Blog

Revenue Continues to Drop for Major Healthcare Staffing Firms

The top two staffing agencies in the industry continue to see their revenue decline.

Yesterday, Cross Country Healthcare Inc. reported a fourth-quarter revenue decline of 39.7% to $124.1 million from fourth quarter 2008 revenue of $205.9 million. In addition, Cross Country's nurse and allied staffing revenue fell 47.1% on a year-over-year basis to $65.4 million. However, on a slightly positive note, their revenue in this area rose 2.1% sequentially from the third quarter. They also reported fourth-quarter net income of $398,000 compared with a net loss of $161.3 million in the same period in the previous year.

Today, AMN Healthcare announced similar numbers. AMN reported fourth-quarter revenue fell 51.1% on a year-over-year basis to $144.7 million. However, their relative good news was that their gross margins improved, reporting improvements from 25.7% to 28.4% from the previous years quarter. AMN's fourth-quarter nurse and allied healthcare staffing revenue also fell 64.3% to $74.0 million from $207.3 million in the year-ago quarter. Unlike Cross Country, revenue in the segment fell 9.9% sequentially from the third quarter.

"I'm certain most would agree that 2009 represented the most challenging year in the history of the healthcare staffing industry," President and CEO Susan Nowakowski said. "The unprecedented rise in unemployment and severe economic contraction wreaked havoc and resulted in precipitous drops in demand volumes unlike any other time."

Sadly, signs of economic recovery for the healthcare staffing industry still seem distant.

Broadlane Acquires Symbio Solutions

Symbio Solutions, a leading provider of healthcare Vendor Management Services was acquired by Broadlane this week. There were several bidders during the process but Broadlane was the highest bidder.

Symbio filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January of this year after running into financial trouble and failing to pay their staffing agencies in 2009. 

In addition to gaining the Symbio VMS and core staff scheduling technologies, Broadlane secured agreements with Kaleida health, Baptist Health System of San Antonio, Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital and The Cooper Health System through the transaction. It's unclear if the creditors owed the millions of dollars will get any of their money back or if Broadlane now owns the debt to the staffing agencies.

Hospital Social Media Adoption Data Via Ed Bennett

Ed Bennett has updated his hospital social media data on his blog Found in Cache. This time he has dug a bit deeper into the data and produced some interesting findings. He also very kindly provides access to the raw data of US hospital social media use(excel file) to perform your own analysis.

After qualifying the number of hospitals to those over 100 beds and that have open access to social media platforms, Ed suggests that there is now a 53% adoption rate of social media for US hospitals. Without the qualifiers, however, this number is closer to 14% of all hospitals in the US.

Personally, in regard to hospitals embracing social media as a valuable method of promoting and monitoring their brand, we still have a long way to go. If it's true, as Ed suggests, that about 50% of the hospitals in the US are still blocking access to social media there are still some major roadblocks for mass adoption.

Ed also gives some great reasons as to why he believes the adoption rates are higher for larger hospitals.

The disparity should not be a surprise. Smaller hospitals, like those with less than 100 beds, have less resources to invest in most outward facing services. There’s usually only one person responsible for everything – marketing, public affairs, media relations, web development, philanthropy, etc. No wonder social media isn’t a priority.  In fact only 14% (65) of the hospitals on my list have less than 100 beds, and 86% (395) have more than 100.

What if Booking A Plane Ticket Worked Like Our Healthcare System?

Whether you're for or against healthcare reform I think it's difficult to argue that our current system is working.

Think about the services you make use of every day from business to personal. Booking a hotel, finding a photo online, sharing information with your friends, or managing your internal work projects. Imagine if any of these services were as difficult to work with as our current healthcare system. Would you continue to use them?

Not being a big fan of the government, what shocks me is that, in this case, we're not talking about the government running something inefficiently. We're talking about private business. It's the private insurance companies that have failed to deliver a viable model or useful service when it comes to healthcare. How people can continue to support this broken system when they would have no tolerance for a similar level of service from the services they use everyday is beyond me.

This video is a parody of what it would be like to book a plane ticket with a travel agency that had a business model similar to our current healthcare system. Makes you think.

Concerro, Inc. Acquires RES-Q Healthcare Systems

Yesterday, Concerro, Inc., announced their acquisition of RES-Q Healthcare Systems. Concerro, formerly BidShift, has come along way since their inception in 1999. Offering more now than just shift bidding technology, through acquisitions and proprietary software development they also offer incident response and management systems as well as a core scheduling and staffing application for hospitals.

RES-Q Healthcare Systems is one of the largest providers of hospital core staff scheduling systems. They were recently recognized as the 2009 Best in KLAS software market segment leader for Staff and Nurse Scheduling.

The acquisition is a good strategic move for Concerro and will better position them in the market through this rapid expansion of their customer base.

RES-Q’s award winning labor management and scheduling applications are the only solutions that align completely with Concerro’s strategy to help healthcare organizations control labor costs through optimization rather than reduction,” said Graham Barnes, CEO of Concerro.

via www.businesswire.com

My Interview on Staffing Talk

Last Friday, Gregg Dourgarian of Tempworks Staffing Software and the blog Staffing Talk had me on his call in show. We discussed several topics such as ShiftWise Healthcare Vendor Management, the current economic state of the healthcare staffing industry, the social media application foursquare, Social Media Marketing (SMM) and staffing agencies and my blog Staffing Robot.

Gregg is an active blogger and continues to try new things. He is definitely helping to further advance the use technology and social media in the staffing industry. Thanks for having me on your show Gregg.

You can watch the show here.