Travel Nurse Across America

While the nursing shortage is a bad diagnosis for hospitals, it has been a big business for Travel Nurse Across America of Little Rock.

The company recruits nurses who are willing to fill in at hospitals across the country and matches them with hospitals looking for nurses.

Travel Nurse handles all the arrangements, from finding housing to setting up drug tests for the nurses, said Gwen Darling, the company’s director of sales and marketing. The hospitals pay Travel Nurse, and then Travel Nurse pays the nurses.

Darling wouldn’t release sales figures but said revenue has jumped 326 percent between 2000 and 2004. Travel Nurse was founded in Little Rock in 1999 in response to the critical nursing shortage.

Currently, the company has 34 employees and more than 200 nurses on assignment. Travel Nurse also has between 1,500 and 2,000 hospitals on file looking for nurses, Darling said.

“It’s very complex, what we do,” she said.

Travel Nurse has to recruit the nurses and then handle all the licensing and insurance paperwork to get them an assignment at a hospital in an area of their choice. A typical tour of duty lasts 13 weeks.

Then Travel Nurse handles all the paperwork from the hospital’s end to ensure the nurse is ready to go the first day.

“Different hospitals have different requirements,” Darling said. “We pride ourselves here on exceeding expectations.”

She said each of the company’s departments relies on the others to make sure the nurses’ assignments go smoothly.

“We all really rely on each other here, and I think it’s that sprit of teamwork that’s contributed to the success,” Darling said.

Darling said she isn’t worried that a surplus of nurses will come along and put the company out of business. By 2020, there will still be a severe nursing shortage, Darling said a study showed.

“So I’m not thinking that that’s going to be an issue,” she said.