Lead Healthstaff

Lead Healthstaff

• Rank: 5
• Headquarters: Los Angeles
• Top staffing segment(s) served: Travel nursing
• 2020 US staffing revenue: $16.1 million
• Compound annual growth rate: 59.3%
• Website: www.leadhealthstaff.com

A decade ago, Laban Pattanaik, founder and CEO of Lead Healthstaff, had no idea his firm would turn into one of the fastest-growing US staffing companies dedicated to sending traveling nurses into acute care hospitals around the US.

Lead Healthstaff isn’t just a business for Pattanaik - it’s personal. After spending two years in and out of hospitals and healthcare facilities while his parents dealt with medical issues, Pattanaik knew that he wanted to make a difference in the lives of both patients and healthcare professionals. He wanted to create a nurse-focused organization to take care of the people who were taking care of patients, so in 2016, he started to transition his company to a focus on travel nurses. “I recall talking to my recruiter, reaching out to my hospitals from my dad’s skilled nursing facility or from my mom’s hospital bedside … that’s really how it grew.”

In building and growing Lead Healthstaff into what it is today, culture has been extremely important. “Nothing is more important than culture,” Justin Allison, chief growth officer, states. “What’s our why?”

And putting culture first has helped the company grow. In addition to investments into systems, technologies and processes, Lead Healthstaff is also investing in their staff by putting people before profits and being servant leaders. They believe in empathy and creating a safe place for their employees to work. They also believe in hiring based on character, not necessarily on skill alone, and that has allowed them to move talent within their company to ensure that their employees are in the right positions.

With Covid-19 still rampant across the globe, Lead Healthstaff is more critical than ever. “The obstacle is the way” has been the mantra at Lead Healthstaff for the past 18 months, and Covid-19 has definitely been an obstacle. But being in the nursing industry, Lead Healthstaff has seen the pandemic fuel its growth. They’ve been able to provide nurses in critical areas of the country where hospitals are understaffed.

Pattanaik and Allison are also passionate about mental health awareness for healthcare professionals and believe that it will be a growing responsibility in their industry. “With respect to mental health and burnout, all of those things can’t be overstated and so it’s our responsibility as an industry … to be offering some kind of solutions for a candidate,” Pattanaik says. Allison adds that being active and getting outside are some of the ways their nurses are helping to improve their mental health.

The future is bright for Lead Healthstaff. They’re embracing technology and are working to make the client experience easy and transparent. Pattanaik and Allison know that in order to grow, they will have to embrace change to stay relevant in the market. They are also invested in their team and making sure that they are fired up and passionate about the mission and vision of Lead Healthstaff.

At the end of the day, Pattanaik isn’t concerned about profit, but about legacy. “I want to build something that five, 10, 20 years from now, I am truly proud of.”