Health Carousel

Health Carousel

• Rank: 6
• Headquarters: Cincinnati, OH
• Top staffing segment(s) served –  Travel nursing, locum tenens
• 2019 US staffing revenue – $303.0 million
• Compound annual growth rate – 52.7%
• Website: healthcarousel.com

Growth is part of the culture at Health Carousel, a Cincinnati-based provider of travel nurse staffing. In fact, growth is part of its DNA.

“Growth is a decision, and it requires a commitment and it involves risk to try to grow,” CEO and Co-founder Bill DeVille says. “Particularly in difficult times, it’s sometimes challenging to do that, but we’re committed to grow.”

The growth culture is found throughout the company through its values, one of which, for example, is to “raise the bar.” That means continuing to improve and striving to achieve excellence. In turn, Health Carousel’s growth enables the company to serve its customers better and creates opportunities for its staff.

“We’re not interested in getting B’s and C’s, we’re really trying to be the company that earns A’s for everything we do,” Deville says. And that culture is not accidental, he stresses. It’s a very deliberate initiative.

“A lot of people talk about culture, but it’s really how you live it,” says Stacey Stanley, president of locum tenens.

Health Carousel has a lot of people who like to win, and it aims to live its culture each day. Bringing the heart of the company’s culture together is its higher purpose: to make sure patients have access to healthcare.

The company also has a chief people officer who helps drive engagement on a weekly basis. The company also fosters engagement by giving back with blood drives, helping charities at the holidays and more. Each employee also receives funds that they can allocate to the charity of their choice.

The company has seen growth via acquisitions as well, Stanley says, although the Fastest-Growing US Staffing Firms list does not include acquired revenue in its calculations. Last year, Health Carousel acquired Lucidity, an online staffing platform for the locum tenens market.

The company is also boosting growth through innovation. It launched a platform called “On Demand” for travel nurses that enables them to work with a recruiter as much or as little as they want. The platform puts nurses in control of whether they talk to an actual recruiter or operate independently, says John Sebastian, president of travel nursing and chief digital officer.

It also looks to innovate by meeting a client’s specific needs rather than coming forward with a pre-packaged solution. One example of that is allowing clients flexibility in determining assignment lengths.

“The pandemic has pointed out even more how a ‘one size fits all’ to our clients is not what our clients are looking for,” Sebastian says.

Healthcare Carousel, as with all other companies, has been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, and especially so because it is a healthcare staffing firm. However, Erik Schuman, president – international and chief sales officer, said the crisis is further exposing one trend that was already happening: the US needs more nurses.

To help fill the void, the company has worked with some in the US Senate to put forward the “Healthcare Workforce Resiliency Act,” which is aimed at providing more access to foreign-educated nurses in the US. “The impact of the nurse shortage has never been more exposed than during Covid-19 and as such, high-growth companies like Health Carousel have a social responsibility that increases as we grow,” Schuman says. “As a social enterprise, ‘we do well by doing good.’”