The Best Travel Nursing Companies 2015

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Whether you re a newcomer to travel nursing or a seasoned veteran, finding the best travel nursing companies to work with is important. Travel nurses count on their agencies to deliver on a broad set of crucial services so wanting to find the best is understandable. The problem is that there is a lot of disparate information on the topic. So in this blog post, we ll dissect the 2015 Top Travel Nurse Company lists from the two most prominent travel nursing rating services.

The Problem with General Travel Nursing Agency Reviews and Ratings

There are tons of services out there designed to offer employer ratings, so you may be wondering why we re focusing on only 2. The answer is that the 2 services we re focusing on are specific to travel nursing and have a large enough sample size to be relevant.

As a traveler, you have to be careful when relying on review and rating services that aren t dedicated to travel healthcare. For example, Indeed.com and GlassDoor.com  are two prominent providers of employer ratings. In fact, if you do a Google search for: American Mobile Reviews, the top result is from Indeed.com and the fourth result is from GlassDoor. For those that aren t familiar, American Mobile is the largest travel nursing company in the country.

American Mobile receives 3.5 stars out of 5 on Indeed.com and 3.9 stars out of 5 on GlassDoor.com. The problem is that the company has only 46 reviews on Indeed and 24 reviews on GlassDoor. Moreover, some of those reviews are from the company s internal employees who aren t really able to speak about the service the company provides to their travelers.

Meanwhile, American Mobile received 1.7 stars out of 5 on TravelNursingBlogs.com based on 73 reviews. They receive a rating of 46.8 out of a possible 100 on TravelNursingCentral.com and they receive a 12 out of a possible 20 on HighwayHypodermics.com.

We don t mean to pick on American Mobile. This is just an illustration of how and why ratings can be disparate between general rating services and those specific to travel healthcare. Whether or not to rely on general services is up to each individual, but it s always helpful to know how such services differ.

Background on the Top Travel Nursing Agency List Providers for 2015

About the Top Company Lists

With that in mind, let s turn our focus to the two most prominent Top Agency Lists. One is put out by TravelNursingCentral.com (TNC) and the other is put out by HighwayHypodermics.com (HH). Each year these services release their lists of top agencies based on reviews they received between January and December of the preceding year. So the lists for 2015 are indications of the reviews that the services received in 2014. Both services are designed to accept reviews from only travel healthcare professionals.

There are also some key differences between the lists. Highway Hypodermics puts out a Top 10 list, but also releases a list of 10 honorable mentions for a total of 20. Highway Hypodermics uses two ranking criteria. First, they average the agency evaluations that are submitted by travel healthcare professionals. The maximum evaluation score is 20.

Second, Highway Hypodermics maintains a Benefits Score that awards 1 point for each benefit that an agency offers. 21 different benefits are tracked so the maximum Benefit Score is 21.  Highway Hypodermics combines the Benefits and Evaluation scores that an agency receives and then ranks the highest scoring agencies 1 through 20 based on the total score. Finally, in order to qualify, agencies must have received 10 evaluations and have updated their Benefits Questionnaires within the past 3 years.

Highway Hypodermics also maintains an interesting rule for accepting reviews from travel nurses. The website will not accept a negative review from a traveler unless the traveler has also submitted a positive review of another company. Reviews are deemed negative if they receive less than 10 points out of a possible 20. This is a great idea given the fact that people are typically more motivated to submit negative reviews. So this policy ensures that the site has a balance of both negative and positive reviews.

TNC s list of top agencies includes a total of 12 companies. Rather than ranking them from highest to lowest, TNC categorizes the agencies into Gold, Silver, and Bronze categories. There are four agencies in each category. In order to qualify, the agency must have been voluntarily rated within the last 3 months, must have a company website and must have a total of 15 ratings or more.

The 4 companies that receive the highest evaluation scores are awarded a Gold Rating. The next four are awarded a Silver Rating and the next four are awarded a Bronze rating. TNC does it this way to signify the idea that all of the agencies within a given category should be viewed at the same level. With very few points separating agencies, this makes sense.

TNC does not require that negative reviewers also post a positive review. However, they do encourage users to submit positive reviews.

About the List Providers

TNC was originally founded in the early 2000 s by a travel nurse. The website was purchased in the last couple of years by Medical Solutions, Inc, which is the third largest travel nursing company according to Staffing Industry Analysts. The company maintains that TNC remains an unbiased source of information for travel healthcare professionals.

Highway Hypodermics is owned and operated by Epstein LaRue, BSN, RN. Epstein began travel nursing in 2003 and published the website s first top 10 list in 2005. She is also the author of Highway Hypodermics, an excellent book about travel nursing. She actively seeks to ensure that the information she receives about travel nursing company benefits is accurate.

Comparing the Best Travel Nurse Company Lists

As mentioned above, Highway Hypodermics releases a Top 10 list and adds another 10 agencies as Honorable Mentions for a total of 20 agencies. TNC releases a list of 12 agencies and classifies them in Gold, Silver and Bronze categories with 4 agencies in each category. Below are the top 12 agencies from each list so that we can compare them side by side.