The healthcare market is normalizing, however the alternative stays robust. Healthcare staffing is significantly bigger than it was in 2019, and demand for providers continues. The problem? Capitalizing on that chance effectively whereas laying the groundwork for sustainable development. That’s the place AI in healthcare staffing turns into important for aggressive differentiation.
AI in healthcare staffing isn’t on the horizon—it’s already delivering measurable outcomes for companies able to take motion. In a market the place healthcare staffing companies are balancing fewer requisitions, ongoing supplier shortages, and strain to rework digitally, the leaders pulling forward aren’t ready for good circumstances. They’re implementing AI strategically, fixing actual issues on the desk stage, and seeing spectacular returns.
Throughout SIA‘s Healthcare Staffing Summit 2025, Catherine Pearson, President of Fastaff, Springboard, and HCS at Ingenovis Well being, and Jonah Rader, President and COO of Related Well being Care, shared what’s working of their organizations. Their message was clear: AI and recruitment automation are reworking the supplier expertise and driving development in difficult circumstances.
The enterprise case for AI in healthcare staffing
In line with the GRID 2025 Trade Traits Report: Healthcare Highlight, healthcare staffing companies predicted AI may save every recruiter 19 hours per week. And what’s extra companies utilizing AI are 96% extra prone to develop.
However right here’s what makes this vital: it has change into tougher to draw and retain healthcare professionals. Supplier satisfaction with staffing companies has declined as a result of processes are too difficult or take too lengthy. The excellent news? The GRID 2025 Expertise Traits Report: Healthcare Highlight discovered that 75% of suppliers say their expertise with recruitment AI was constructive, and AI can improve supplier loyalty by anyplace from 30% to 50%.
“It’s important to meet candidates the place they’re and perceive that folks need issues now,” mentioned Rader. “They need solutions now. They need to have the ability to do their background examine and schedule a telephone display screen with out anyone calling or getting one other random e mail.”
The place AI is being utilized in healthcare staffing at the moment
Essentially the most profitable AI implementations deal with particular, high-impact use circumstances. A framework for selecting the place to deploy AI? “What are your main points?” mentioned Pearson. “So I might say one thing that’s tedious and time-consuming, however not advanced.”
Partaking candidates across the clock
Healthcare professionals work nights, weekends, and 12-hour shifts. Conventional enterprise hours don’t work for them. Related Well being Care makes use of AI and automation throughout the expertise lifecycle to fulfill candidates the place they’re, permitting them to finish duties on their very own time inside their time constraints. Rader shared, “How can we place folks sooner, get folks linked to the roles sooner, make the method streamlined, after which, clearly, after all, how will you simply drive effectivity in your recruiters and account managers?”
Related Well being Care makes use of AI mixed with different instruments throughout the expertise lifecycle as a win-win for each suppliers and recruiters. Rader mentioned they’re utilizing AI and automation to “broaden on alternatives, broaden on [candidate’s] pursuits, after which automate loads of these processes by way of one system, so that they’re not getting emails from 4 totally different portals and never having that complicated expertise. On prime of that, it results in recruiters waking up within the morning with extra actionable duties to work on. Even that has offered loads of alternative to broaden on the place we will place our clinicians.”
Clever matching and sourcing
Job match stays a vital ache level, particularly when recruiters don’t perceive supplier wishes or aims, in accordance with the GRID 2025 Expertise Traits Report Healthcare Highlight. Pearson mentioned, “There are developed options on matching the correct candidates to the correct jobs the place an LLM has extra subtle job scoring based mostly on the prior success charges with these purchasers, since you need your recruiters to trust that in the event that they undergo this well being system versus that, the probability of them getting a proposal is bigger.”
At Ingenovis Well being, they wish to spend much less cash on lower-margin jobs, relying extra on their database slightly than job boards, the place prices can add up rapidly. Pearson says, “It’s going to the database extra. And with that, in 2025 to date, we’ve elevated the variety of placements when folks supply on their database by 200%.”
AI-powered candidate screening
Related Well being Care carried out AI-powered screening that engages candidates inside quarter-hour of utility, no matter time of day. The outcomes? Rader mentioned, “We’ve seen a 58% completion fee from these invitations with a satisfaction rating of 4.73 out of 5. Candidates love the screener. One of many different necessary alternatives is that everyone knows clinicians are making use of to one million totally different jobs. And so how can we make the most of the tech to broaden our recruiters’ capability to position them at a number of locations or a number of states, not simply the one job that they apply for?”
Utilizing AI for paper timesheet processing
Pearson highlighted automating paper timesheet processing as one other use case. “Our candidates care about getting paid precisely and on time,” Pearson defined. “Mess up their paycheck two weeks in a row, they usually received’t be blissful to work for us.”
AI-powered paper timesheet processing extracts the information with guidelines you’ll be able to arrange, eliminating handbook entry, lowering payroll errors, and accelerating funds to suppliers. Pearson mentioned, “It makes that assessment actually quick, and you’ll get rid of that handbook time entry. …It helps streamline that in a straightforward approach, to simply get rid of that a part of the friction.”
The outcomes of utilizing AI communicate for themselves
Related Well being Care has closely adopted Bullhorn Amplify and seen transformative outcomes. “Knowledge enrichment is large. If it doesn’t reside in your database, you’ll be able to’t act on it. So, we spend loads of time specializing in knowledge well being and enrichment. We’re saving roughly 200 hours per week on automated duties and enrichment duties, which implies making the candidate connection to distinctive jobs simpler as a result of it’s all streamlined,” Rader says.
The operational enhancements translate on to enterprise outcomes: “We’ve additionally seen outcomes, particularly over the past two months. Our pre-screen counts, so our recruiters really speaking to folks, have gone up over 40% from month to month. We’re seeing longer speak occasions, longer common length telephone requires our recruiters, which implies they’re not solely higher prioritizing, but additionally having extra significant conversations, and we’re having stronger outcomes. We’ve seen consumer submittals go up about 96% up to now 45 days. Placements have been up over 35% month over month as effectively. I consider we’re solely scratching the floor of that chance.”
The AI adoption framework that works in healthcare
Each leaders emphasised that profitable AI adoption in staffing begins with understanding issues on the desk stage and never implementing know-how for know-how’s sake. Pearson mentioned, “Construct cool issues that remedy issues, and they’ll undertake it.” Rader added, “Ask your crew what’s taking on a lot of their time that they don’t assume is helpful. That’s an awesome place to begin.”
The sensible method each leaders suggest:
- Begin small and particular. Establish one or two high-impact ache factors—tedious duties that eat time however don’t require advanced decision-making.
- Centralize your knowledge. If candidate interactions reside throughout fragmented techniques, your AI can’t be taught successfully. Every part ought to stream into your ATS to create a single supply of fact.
- Take a look at with a core crew first. Each leaders talked about utilizing the “SEAL Group Six” method—a small group of adaptable recruiters who can take a look at, present suggestions, and assist refine the answer earlier than broader rollout.
- Keep away from dedication bias. In the event you’ve invested closely in an answer that’s now outdated or underutilized, forcing adoption received’t remedy the issue. As a substitute, be prepared to pivot and deal with instruments that present they assist recruiters be extra profitable.
- Measure what issues. Your KPIs may have to vary. If automation reduces the variety of pre-screens required however will increase placement charges, that’s a win—regulate your metrics accordingly.
The human aspect stays vital
AI in healthcare staffing isn’t about changing relationships. It’s about enabling them at scale. In spite of everything, healthcare professionals nonetheless wish to work with recruiters they belief. Pearson mentioned, “It’s nice that it’s nonetheless a relationship enterprise. The recruiterless mannequin didn’t win throughout the pandemic. It’s not like ordering an Uber, I’m going to give up my job, and I’m going to work on a 13-week project for much less of a premium than I did earlier than. They nonetheless need these relationships. So from all the things that you simply’re doing with know-how is attempting to assist recruiters foster these relationships…do that work to allow them to get to the recruiter sooner, to allow them to speak to an individual.”
AI handles administrative burden, qualification screening, and off-hours engagement, in order that recruiters and candidates join, these conversations are substantive and relationship-building.
Your aggressive benefit begins now
The healthcare staffing companies which are profitable at the moment are iterating rapidly and making disciplined choices about the place to spend money on digital transformation. Ready round for good circumstances or complete AI methods means falling behind. The companies that begin now—even with small steps—are constructing capabilities that compound over time.
Able to see how AI can rework your healthcare staffing agency? Study extra about Bullhorn Amplify, our AI-powered answer designed that can assist you obtain extra placements and higher margins with the identical crew at bullhorn.com/amplify.
