Can Nursing agencies and hospitals work together?

The obvious answer to this is that in many cases they already do. The real question however is how can they make this relationship work for both parties more effectively.

Here are some simple tips for hospitals, to allow them to get better value for money and better staff:

In the agreed contract between you and the agency, hospitals often have the right to see CVs of nurses working at the hospital. In order to satisfy the ward manager recruiting the nurse make sure you ask for a copy of there details before a new nurse is accepted for a temporary assignment.

Ask your agencies whether you can communicate with them electronically, email is a start, but they may be using an Internet based system, such as Nurselink. Remember, sending an email costs something like 0.05p, a phone call can cost 100x more!

Service level agreements are a great way of ensuring that both parties know exactly where they stand. But don't make them too stringent, remember you both have to work with them.

When signing a contract with an agency, remember to ask what their commission levels are, commission is calculated by taking the base pay to the nurses and adding a fixed percentage to each of the levels of pay associated with individual nurses. As a rough guide, something between 15 and 30% is acceptable depending on the type of nurse involved. If the skill set of the nurses is difficult to obtain on the open market, the total price is likely to be higher.

Remember if you have any helpful points please email them here, but please give us your name and organisation if possible.