The travel nurse skill segment continues to show disproportionate gains with revenue up by more than 100% year over year in February, according to the median response in the SIA’s most recent Pulse Survey. In addition, 15% of travel nurse staffing firms reported an increasing trend in new orders over the last three months and 28% reported increased bill rates.
Some 150 staffing firms took part in the latest Pulse survey, including 90 from the healthcare sector.
Median temporary staffing revenue growth among all firms taking part in the survey was 5% year over year in February, down from 10% in January. This includes a 23% increase for per diem nursing, 21% for allied healthcare and 14% for locum tenens.
Vaccine Rollout
The survey also asked companies, “How has your staffing firm been engaging with the vaccine rollout in terms of supporting, encouraging, offering, and/or tracking vaccinations of temporary workers on assignment and internal staff?” Eight of the 17 healthcare staffing firms responding to this question expressed support for vaccines; eight also mentioned that they are supplying healthcare staff to administer vaccines.
Insightful responses from the healthcare sector include:
"We have tracked all Covid exposure for all internal and field staff throughout the pandemic. Many opportunities existed for working with corporations and municipalities to staff vaccine rollout or Covid monitoring."
"Our traveling healthcare professionals are getting the vaccine at their assignment location, most often offered by the facility where they are working. For our internal staff, we have left that to the individual at this point. A large majority of our company is working from home across the entire country and the situation is still very different state by state and city by city. We support both our travelers and internal staff with communications on vaccines and availability as well as our internal staff nurse team being available for questions and assistance."
"We have a small team within our organization dedicated to helping provide updates and resources to our corporate and temporary staff. Generally this information includes anything from discussions with our clients to help guide them through the vaccinations and any requirements they may have, to managing and tracking the vaccinations for our healthcare professionals. We have also provided resources to our corporate staff to reference as they communicate with our clients and temporary staff, as well as resources for their own vaccinations."
Office Space
Survey participants were also queried about how they expect their company’s total office space and total number of offices to change by the end of 2021 compared with before the pandemic.
Among those serving the healthcare industry, a net 4% expect their companies to decrease office space in some way by the end of the year while 9% expect a reduction in their company’s number of offices.
A report that includes selected highlights from the Pulse Survey is available to corporate members of SIA; the full Pulse report itself is available only to companies that took part in the survey. For more information on participating in the next survey, contact SIA Research Analyst Curtis Starkey at cstarkey@staffingindustry.com.
