Aya Healthcare

Aya Healthcare

• Rank: 10
• Headquarters: San Diego
• Top staffing segment(s) served: Travel nursing
• 2020 US staffing revenue: $1,493.6 million
• Compound annual growth rate: 48.3%
• Website: www.ayahealthcare.com

With nearly $1.5 billion in 2020 revenue, Aya Healthcare is the largest company in the top 10 fastest-growing US staffing firms. Alan Braynin, president and CEO of the San Diego-based healthcare staffing provider, cites several factors driving growth at the firm.

One driver is Aya’s digital platform that connects clinicians to client companies, Braynin says. Hospitals and other healthcare staffing buyers access the platform under the Aya Connect brand to request clinicians. The “MyAya” brand is the clinician-facing login.

The clinician feature had been in testing mode in 2019. Then the pandemic hit in 2020, and the company suddenly had clients in the Northeast that needed 3,000 travel nurses within two weeks. That’s when the feature came into its own, officially launching to meet the surge in demand for healthcare professionals.

Braynin says the move to digitalization resulted in significant efficiencies for corporate employers. It also helped engage clinicians.

“Obviously demand in our sector is very high, but also our clinician engagement is very high,” he says.

In a recent week, the company’s platform had more than 82,000 unique clinician users and more than 835,800 job views. Approximately 75% of the users are registered nurses.

The company also continues to invest in digital technology to handle demand going forward.

Another factor driving growth is Aya’s efforts to hire internal staff to meet demand. It was hiring in 2020 and continues to do so today.

“We are still a people business, and even though we’ve digitized large components, we still rely on people to facilitate our solution,” Braynin says.

He also says that while clinicians are in demand, Covid-19 isn’t the primary driver. Instead, labor market disruptions caused by Covid have prompted the demand for clinicians. Those disruptions include people leaving the labor market, a backup in procedures put off during the height of the pandemic and other disruptions.

Another driver is culture, which Braynin describes as paramount when it comes to growth.

“It’s certainly been challenging in a remote environment, but we’ve made investments in our folks, in our people,” he says. Aya has had a number of companywide virtual events, including one with cast members from Saturday Night Live in 2020. It’s also taken fitness classes for employees and other in-person events and made them virtual - though it’s recently moved to more in-person events.

Aya also provides support services for employees, and it has enacted raises for significantly more than 1,000 corporate internal workers in the last few months, Braynin says. The raises come amid inflationary pressures in the economy to make sure employees’ compensation keeps up.

Looking forward, the company plans on continuing to ramp up internal staff.