As a healthcare staffing leader or hiring manager, you may be familiar with what a Managed Services Provider (MSP) does or know how an MSP works. Or, you may not know how it differs from more traditional contingent healthcare staffing. If you don’t know or need more details, don’t be embarrassed. At Medical Solutions, it’s a question we hear more than you might suspect. Here’s an MSP described in clear terms and illustrations.
A healthcare system’s current use of some contingent labor services may look a lot like this:
The healthcare facility is surrounded by a universe of staffing agencies and other vendors. Hiring managers may have different touch points for pre-screening and interviews as they do for managing compliance. Leaders have differing points of contact for market information as they do for reporting or analytics. While staffing agencies are finding clinicians, they’re not working in concert. And every single vendor has a different invoice.
This arrangement puts a strain on human resources, hiring managers and supply chain leaders. While some of these administrative tasks are handled by agencies, too often the burden falls on to the facility’s staff to carry. By partnering with an MSP for contingent labor, a healthcare system’s plan could look more like this:
Compare this diagram to the earlier one, and you start to see the difference an MSP makes. A facility communicates their needs to an MSP, who works with hundreds of staffing agencies nationwide to address their staffing challenges. Because of its large network of staffing agencies/vendors, jobs are quickly seen by more candidates. The MSP shares the requirements with other vendors/staffing agencies, manages the candidate submissions to those openings, and handles the billing and invoicing for the services. A healthcare system gets one trusted point of contact for their needs, and the streamlined ease of one contract and one invoice.
For comparison’s sake, consider the example of an insurance broker. You communicate your needs and expectations with that broker, and they bring back several options for you. They know your preferences and present the best options to you. In much the same way, an MSP provides the two-fold value of both expanded reach and improved efficiency. Healthcare systems can find clinicians faster and with less busywork.
An MSP can help you find more people faster and easier. Are they the right people? When looking for an MSP, don’t just consider their fill rate, but also the quality of the clinicians. The Medical Solutions clinical team screens travelers for both clinical and cultural fit with a facility. This is reflected in our travelers’ 95% assignment completion rate.
Equipped with this basic understanding of how an MSP helps address staffing needs, you’ll be ready to have a conversation and ask questions about if an MSP might work for your healthcare system. Contact us to start that conversation.
