Aya Healthcare

Aya Healthcare

• Rank: 7
• Headquarters: San Diego
• Top staffing segment(s) served: Travel nursing
• Final 2022 revenue: $11.21 billion
• Final CAGR 2018 through 2022: 118.4%
• Website: ayahealthcare.com

Aya Healthcare got its start in 2001 when its founder, Alan Braynin, saw a way to apply an exchange-based business model to travel nurse staffing. It has based its success on a combination of technology and people ever since.

The entire process of finding and accepting a travel nursing job on Aya happens online, says April Hansen, Aya’s group president of workforce solutions. A nurse can browse jobs on Aya’s website, dialing in the search according to preferences such as location, nursing specialty and shift. Listings clearly state the pay range for each job.

After a candidate applies for a posting, the proposed match of nurse and position goes to a human recruiter who ushers the candidate through the remainder of the process. “By the time they talk to a recruiter, they want to know about the clinician experience at a given job as well as how they can find housing at the new location,” Hansen says. After that, Aya works to get the candidate in front of the hospital that’s hiring, potentially negotiating a bit to fine-tune compensation. A nurse can have an offer in as little as a day.

Aya’s performance numbers suggest that its platform works. Based on 2022 data, Staffing Industry Analysts named Aya as the largest healthcare staffing firm in the US, with 16.3% market share; it also ranked as the largest travel nurse firm, the largest allied healthcare firm, the 15th-largest per diem nurse firm, and the 22nd-largest locum tenens firm.

“This level of technology isn’t typical,” Hansen says. “We’ve made aggressive investments in technology, taking a platform approach and aggregating both supply and demand so they can transact with each other around economies of scale.”

She adds that the people are also an important part of company strategy. Similar companies might use only technology with no human involvement, or they might skip using technology altogether. “It’s important that this is a tech-mediated process with a human touch,” Hansen says.

Despite its success, the model has drawbacks. Aya’s growth has been limited by internal capacity, and Hansen says the company is using technology to help clear that barrier.

Aya’s next goals include broadening its offerings to include digital recruitment tools, providing physician and other advanced staff and filling permanent vacancies.

The company also hopes to help clients lower their labor costs. “All health systems are trying to manage the bottom line. They’re trying to cut down on premium pay and maximize the number of patients they can care for,” says Sophia Morris, Aya’s executive VP for client fulfillment and strategy teams.

Using artificial intelligence to help facilities create better staffing patterns for their core staff is one way Aya does just that. “Artificial intelligence can overlay scheduling patterns to better meet fluctuating patient demand,” Morris says. Overtime scheduling leads to worker attrition and boosts costs. When staffing levels are logical and optimal, clients require less overtime from permanent workers, so they save money both on wages and on training new people.