What Is an MSP in Healthcare? How It Can Solve Staffing Challenges

March 1, 2023

What Is MSP in Healthcare?

Healthcare staffing challenges are impacting every area of the industry. In fact, recent research indicates that 88% of nurses are concerned about the effect of staffing shortages on patient care. These issues persist as advancing technology, tightening regulations, and growing patient needs make the landscape more complex than ever.

Fortunately, there’s help on the horizon. Healthcare facilities can turn to Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to streamline workforce management. That begs the question, what is an MSP in the context of healthcare? While MSPs are commonly used in IT and business operations, in healthcare, they provide comprehensive staffing solutions, ensuring facilities have the right professionals in place to meet patient needs.

A robust managed service provider consolidates sourcing, recruiting, compliance, business intelligence, and employee support into a single, centralized operation. This, in turn, can improve effectiveness and efficiency within your healthcare organization.

Managed Service Providers are game changers in healthcare staffing. Before MSPs, healthcare facilities were responsible for managing many contracts for healthcare workers and suppliers, which was a logistical nightmare. MSPs help ease the burden of managing a contingent workforce by sourcing qualified talent, streamlining the credentialing process, ensuring compliance, tracking resource allocation, and more— all through one point of contact.

If you're new to healthcare MSPs, now is the perfect time to explore how they can simplify operations, enhance efficiency, and ultimately improve patient outcomes.

How MSP Programs Work

A healthcare Managed Service Provider (MSP) is a company that provides comprehensive workforce management solutions to healthcare organizations, particularly for their contingent workforce needs.

Typically, MSPs will handle all of the recruitment, screening, credentialing, scheduling, billing, and compliance management for temporary, part-time, or full-time healthcare staff such as nurses, therapists, and other allied health professionals.

MSPs act as a single point of contact for healthcare organizations, simplifying the staffing process and providing greater visibility and control over their workforce. They offer tech-enabled solutions that streamline workflows and improve operational efficiency while ensuring that healthcare organizations have access to skilled, qualified, and reliable staff to deliver high-quality patient care and unburden existing staff by minimizing burnout.

MSP programs follow a proven, coordinated process to help healthcare providers and facilities manage their workforce more efficiently. Within a typical workflow, here’s what happens:

Healthcare provider communicates a staff need to the MSP
MSP shares the position internally and with sub-vendors
MSP manages the hiring, onboarding, and credentialing process
MSP handles vendor contracts and billing
Facility gains a quality candidate in an efficient and timely manner
Facility receives one contract and one bill from the MSP
Outline the primary roles of an MSP, adding examples of how GHR supports these functions

Each of these actions plays a vital role in helping healthcare providers to recruit, support, and retain their staff members.

Communicating Staffing Needs

Every healthcare company will have different staffing needs based on the patients they serve and the way they operate. For example, a telehealth provider may require a remote team of specialists to serve patients nationwide, while another organization might need travel nurses to support their workforce during peak demand periods.

Healthcare providers using GHR Healthcare as their MSP benefit from a dedicated account manager who gets to know their business and offers a personalized approach to the staffing process. With an MSP, you can communicate your staffing requirements directly for customized support.

Position Distribution

The healthcare industry moves fast, and timely care is essential for positive patient outcomes. Any MSP you choose should have an efficient staffing process with quick turnaround times to meet your needs effectively.

GHR Healthcare leverages its own network of qualified healthcare professionals, along with sub-vendors, to expand the talent pool. As a managed service provider, we distribute job openings both internally and through sub-vendors, ensuring broad coverage and faster access to top candidates.

Comprehensive Candidate Management

Our team offers significant time and cost savings by taking care of the process from start to finish, including hiring, onboarding, and credentialing. Thanks to our extensive vetting process, we ensure that candidates are qualified and compliant, which in turn significantly reduces your risk exposure.

Vendor and Contract Management

Your managed service provider will handle all contracts and billing for your workforce solutions behind the scenes. As a top staffing agency, GHR Healthcare simplifies the process by providing one contract and one bill. Our impeccable vendor management system consolidates your billing across all vendors and handles the invoicing and management of all other agreements and payments.

Delivering Quality Candidates

To truly benefit from an MSP, you need consistent access to high-quality candidates. Fortunately, GHR Healthcare has a proven track record of delivering top talent reliably.

The outcome of our optimized process is the timely placement of qualified staff for your healthcare facility. Our team works diligently to help you meet both short- and long-term staffing goals, supporting optimal patient care and efficient operations. This approach strengthens your facility and helps take your employer brand to the next level.

Additional MSP Advantages

An MSP offers healthcare providers so much more than just a way to recruit staff. It also helps you audit and optimize your workforce management.

At GHR Healthcare, we offer tools like tracking, benchmarks, and quarterly analysis to help you gauge your progress toward meeting established key performance indicators. These tools help healthcare facilities monitor operations and support the workforce, allowing you to focus on what truly matters: providing excellent patient care.

Benefits of Implementing an MSP in Healthcare

With talent shortages looming across the healthcare field, it can be challenging to find qualified and passionate professionals to handle operations and provide direct patient care.

Fortunately, GHR can ease that burden. As a trusted staffing agency in business for the last 30 years, we have access to a broad talent network. Our extensive candidate pool ensures quick turnaround for your staffing needs and 24/7 support to ensure success.

MSP implementation also offers a high level of operational efficiency, allowing your team to offload administrative tasks associated with workforce management. From sourcing to recruitment, screening, and onboarding, we walk with you every step of the way to refine the process and relieve you of your worries.

Finally, your MSP will make compliance a breeze. At GHR Healthcare, we are committed to meeting credentialing and regulatory standards for all specialties. We work to meet regulatory compliance requirements to reduce your risks on all fronts.

By providing highly qualified and vetted contingency staff, MSPs give organizations the tools to prepare for the changing workforce environment while keeping long-term goals in perspective. Additionally, MSPs provide access to clear tracking of progress reports, benchmarks, and quarterly analysis. All of this comes together to allow health systems to maintain control and focus on delivering the best possible care to those who need it.

Potential Challenges and Considerations

Working with a healthcare-managed service provider to find and hire qualified clinicians and healthcare specialists is not without its challenges.

There are always overcommitment risks, as some managed service providers may overextend their services by working with too many clients at the same time. If they don’t have enough staff or a large enough candidate pool, you may end up with longer fill times and, ultimately, higher costs. This can negate the cost-effective nature of MSP agreements.

Additionally, some managed service providers take a one-size-fits-all approach to working with clients. This can be a hindrance when you have unique needs that a cookie-cutter approach cannot fulfill. It is crucial to select an MSP that can tailor solutions to your specific requirements, whether that be a full-time workforce, remote employees, or contingent staffing solutions.

At GHR Healthcare, we are able to mitigate this challenge with customized, client-focused services. We partner with healthcare providers to understand their needs and ensure that each candidate is a “just right” fit. This approach fosters employee longevity, leading to higher-quality patient care and better patient outcomes.

Choosing the Right MSP for Your Healthcare Facility

When considering working with a managed service provider, it is essential for those in the healthcare sector to assess the following:

Experience and Expertise: Ask the MSP provider for evidence of their track record in the healthcare industry
Technology Implementation: Ensure that your provider offers advanced back-end systems for centralized workforce management
Client Support and Service Quality: Ensure that you will have no problem receiving around-the-clock support

These qualities are essential if you want to refine your operations and truly reduce your administrative burden.

The GHR Advantage: Tailored MSP Solutions

We have 30 years of experience in healthcare and community-based staffing. In that time, GHR Healthcare has built a proven track record of helping facilities improve staffing outcomes, even in a challenging talent landscape.

We are deeply committed to compliance, cost control, and operational efficiency, giving our clients confidence and peace of mind. With our support, attracting top talent will no longer be a problem.

In addition to matching candidates with the roles that fit their needs, we also offer total system workforce solutions for healthcare organizations all across the US. Our tech-enabled, customizable, scalable MSP program empowers organizations to take control of their staffing and focus on what matters most: providing high-quality patient care. Explore GHR’s MSP services to enhance your healthcare organization's workforce management.

Explore GHR’s Workforce Solutions Learn More About Healthcare MSPs

MSP in Healthcare Staffing FAQs

A Managed Service Provider (MSP) in healthcare is a third-party organization that streamlines workforce management by handling recruitment, compliance, and vendor relationships. An MSP helps healthcare systems reduce staffing downtime, improve retention, and ensure facilities have the right professionals available when needed. By leveraging VMS (Vendor Management System) technology, MSPs provide real-time staffing insights and optimize the use of contingent labor to meet fluctuating demand.

An MSP in healthcare enhances scalability by providing flexible staffing solutions, including per diem and contract workers, to meet short- and long-term needs. By using data-driven assessments, MSPs help healthcare organizations plan for staffing fluctuations, ensuring consistent patient care while managing costs efficiently.

Yes, reputable MSPs follow strict HIPAA guidelines to protect patient data when managing healthcare workforce solutions. They implement secure processes and compliance checks to ensure all staffing operations align with industry regulations, reducing risk for healthcare providers.

By centralizing staffing management, an MSP in healthcare optimizes the supply chain of talent, reducing hiring inefficiencies and administrative burdens. MSPs track key metrics such as time-to-fill, turnover rates, and cost per hire, allowing healthcare organizations to refine their staffing initiatives and improve financial performance.

Yes, many case studies demonstrate how MSPs improve staffing efficiency, retention, and patient care outcomes. These reports highlight how MSPs reduce downtime, enhance workforce flexibility, and ensure healthcare organizations can meet their specific needs in an ever-changing industry.