2020 - Best Travel Nursing Agencies

The Best Travel Nursing Companies 2020

The best travel nursing agencies are hard to find. There are over 300 agencies and reviews are spread across multiple services. Meanwhile, travel nursing companies are pivotal in a travel nurse’s career. Therefore, travel nurses are intent to seek out the best agencies. So, we aggregated over 79,000 reviews from the most reputable review sources to bring you this list of the best travel nursing companies of 2020.

Please Note: This article was written in 2020. While it is still very useful, we highly recommend reviewing our newer article below:

The Best Travel Nursing Companies 2023

The Best Travel Nursing Companies 2022

Finding the Best Travel Nursing Companies is Difficult

It’s difficult to find the best travel nursing companies for several reason. It’s important to consider these reasons so you don’t get burned during your search process.

Reviews Differ Across Review Resources

First, there are tons of review services. We have researched as many as we can. That process has taught us that reviews sometimes vary dramatically from one service to the next.

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A company may have a 5-star average on one service and a 2-star average on another. Therefore, travel nurses should check all review sources to get the full picture.

Watch Out for Fake Travel Nursing Reviews

Travel nurses must also consider the trustworthiness of a review source. In recent years, we’ve discovered several review sources that clearly have fake reviews.

We see a new review resource pop up. Suddenly, each travel nursing company has hundreds of reviews despite the fact that the website itself doesn’t even get that many visitors in that amount of time. The reviews have poor grammar and they quickly cease accruing.

People commonly refer to this as “review seeding”. Shady eCommerce companies and unscrupulous Silicon Valley startups commonly utilize this dishonest tactic as a “growth hack”.

So Many Travel Nursing Companies to Review!

Another problem with reviews is that the travel nursing industry is highly asymmetrical. The top 43 companies account for 70% of the industry’s annual revenue. That means that the remaining 250+ companies split the remaining 30%.

That’s not a problem in and of itself. The problem is that a significant number of companies have relatively few travel nurses working for them.

As a result, it’s much more difficult for them to get reviews. Moreover, the reviews they do receive are spread across the large number of review sources. Therefore, it’s often difficult for travel nurses to find a meaningful number of reviews on any one review source.

How We Determined the Best Travel Nursing Companies for 2020

That’s why we’ve been aggregating the reviews of travel nursing companies from trusted review sources since 2017. Each year, we start the process by entering the number of reviews and the review score for each company into a spreadsheet.

We do this for each review source. Here are the 6 review sources we used this year:

Rating Services We Aggregate

  1. Highway Hypodermics
  2. Travel Nursing Central
  3. Facebook
  4. Indeed
  5. Glassdoor
  6. Google

Next, we run a calculation that aggregates the scores into one weighted average score. In doing so, the calculation converts all the scores to a 100-point scale.

Then, the spreadsheet calculates two “Difference Scores”. These difference scores compare the current year to the previous year.

This way, we can reward companies that achieve score increases from one year to the next. On the flip side, we also penalize companies with score decreases.

These penalties and bonuses have a major impact on the final rankings. That’s by design. We want our list to illustrate how the companies performed over the last year.

The original Universal Job Application and Credential Management for travelers.

Our scoring system is actually quite complex. We’ve included a detailed sample at the end of this article.

Insights from Travel Nursing Company Ratings and Reviews for 2020

This year, we collected all the data between May 18, 2020 and May 31, 2020. Of course, with all this information in one place, there are many interesting insights we can glean. Let’s take a look.

Quick Observations

  • Our 2018 article on the “Best Travel Nursing Companies” has been viewed more than 138,000 times. It’s our 5th most viewed article of all time.
  • Our 2019 “Best Travel Nursing Companies” article has been viewed more than 77,000 times. It’s on pace to get more views than the 2018 article.
  • We aggregated 79,671 scores for 324 travel nursing companies this year. Last year, it was 67,364 scores for 305 companies. That’s an increase of 12,307 new scores and 19 new companies. It’s important to note that some of the companies are now defunct. That’s a ton of reviews for this small industry!
  • The weighted average of all scores for all agencies was 78.19 in 2020. That’s up from 78.13 in 2019. Travel nursing companies continue to perform exceptionally well relative to other industries.

Highway Hypodermics

Travel Nurses added 740 new reviews on Highway Hypodermics (HH) in the last year. That’s more than double the number of reviews they added the year before! Highway Hypodermics now has 3,501 total reviews.

The weighted average score of all reviews on HH is 17.54 this year. That’s an increase of .15 from the previous year.

That’s an average score of 88%! That indicates that travel nurses are very pleased with the service they receive from travel nursing companies. It’s important to note that HH accepts reviews only from travelers, not internal staff.

Travel Nursing Central

Travel nurses submitted 1,444 new reviews on Travel Nursing Central (TNC) in the last year. That brings the total number of reviews on TNC to 10,355. TNC also accepts reviews only from travelers.

The weighted average score of all the reviews on TNC this year is 85.38 out of a possible 100. That’s an increase of 1.22 from the previous year. That’s another indication that travel nursing companies are delivering exceptional service.

On a side note, we’ve heard rumors that TNC is no longer owned by staffing firm Medical Solutions. The website was offline for several days in March before coming back online.

When TNC came back online, the site had a new logo that looked exactly like The Gypsy Nurse logo except it had Travel Nursing Central as the name. That logo has since been replaced by the original TNC logo.

Facebook

We counted 584 fewer reviews of travel nursing companies on Facebook this year. That is not a mistake. We saw many instances where companies have fewer reviews on Facebook this year compared to last year.

However, it’s not the companies’ fault. Facebook changed how they do reviews last year. It was a mess last year and it seems it’s still a mess this year.

Nonetheless, the travel nursing industry loves Facebook. The total number of reviews for travel nursing companies on Facebook is now at 7,339.

The weighted average score of all travel nursing company reviews on Facebook is 4.53. That converts to 90.6% on a 100-point scale. That’s really good! However, it marks a slight decrease of .2% from last year.

Indeed

We counted 6,997 new reviews for travel nursing companies on Indeed this year. However, 3,011 of those reviews were for Randstad and Fresenius. Both companies are massive with very small travel healthcare divisions. If we remove them from the mix, then there were 3,986 new reviews on Indeed this year.

That brings the total number of reviews on Indeed to 37,737. If we remove Randstad and Fresenius, then the total is 17,958.

Meanwhile, the weighted average score for all travel nursing companies on Indeed is 3.69 this year. That comes to 73.8% on a 100-point scale. That’s a reduction of .6% from last year.

However, if we remove Fresenius and Randstad from the weighted average, then the weighted average score for the remaining travel nursing companies increases to 3.75. That equates to 75% on a 100-point scale. We’re noting this here because we will completely remove these companies from our calculations next year.

Glassdoor

Glassdoor came in with 2,293 new reviews for travel nursing companies this year. That brings the total number of reviews on Glassdoor to 16,052.

The weighted average score for all travel nursing companies on Glassdoor was 3.66 this year. That equates to 73.2% on a 100-point scale which is an increase of 2%. That’s a really big increase!

Google

We tallied 1,417 new reviews for travel nursing companies on Google this year. That brings the total number of reviews on Google to 4,687.

The weighted average score for all companies on Google dropped from 4.44 in 2019 to 4.42 in 2020. That’s the equivalent of 88.4% on a 100-point scale which is really good.

Why We Include 20 on Our List of the Best Travel Nursing Companies

We are often asked why we include 20 companies on our list of the best travel nursing companies instead of the customary top 10. We include 20 companies for several reasons.

The first time we did this in 2017, we immediately recognized that there were well more than 20 companies that had an average score above 88. Why is that important?

Well, Google, widely considered one of the best companies in the US to work for, has an average score of 88 (4.4) on Glassdoor and 86 (4.3) on Indeed. This indicates to us that any company with similar scores deserves recognition.

Moreover, we’re huge proponents of working with multiple companies. Additionally, the companies with the highest ratings tend to be mid-sized companies who typically have access to fewer jobs than the largest companies in the industry.

That makes it even more important for travelers to work with a higher number of these agencies. In fact, we urge you to work with as many of them as you can. You can use our agency management tools to simplify that process.

Finally, with over 300 travel nursing companies, 20 represents roughly 6% of the industry. That’s a relatively small number of companies for travelers to consider given what’s at stake.

Connect with the Best Travel Nursing Companies on BluePipes

The great news is that 19 of the 20 companies on this year’s list have an active company page on BluePipes. That means you can connect with them using our powerful career management platform developed specifically for travel healthcare professionals.

11 of the companies on this year’s list have active recruitment subscriptions on BluePipes. That means you can find their recruiters, apply to their jobs and more on BluePipes!

Discover why travel nurses call BluePipes their “secret weapon” by selecting the button below.

 

BluePipes’ Best Travel Nursing Companies 2020

We encourage you to consider every company on this list. Their reviews indicate that they all provide exceptional service.

That said, each company has unique benefits and services. Additionally, they may have access to different jobs. They may also differ with respect to their job offerings by region of the country.

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Ultimately, the companies you choose should be those that can meet your unique needs.

Here is our list of the best travel nursing agencies of 2020.

The Best Travel Nursing Companies of 2020
Rank Company Total Reviews Total Score
1 Host Healthcare 905 105.42
2 Axis Medical Staffing 434 100.23
3 Gifted Healthcare 365 99.45
4 Triage Staffing 958 97.97
5 United Staffing Solutions (USSI) 247 97.67
6 Ventura Medstaff 118 96.87
7 Core Medical Group 350 96.84
8 AB Staffing 475 96.36
9 Tailored Healthcare Staffing 612 94.21
10 Advantis Medical 101 93.32
11 Cariant Health Partners 97 93.17
12 Next Travel Nursing 221 93.12
13 Convergence Medical Staffing 156 92.62
14 Medical Solutions 1,559 92.48
15 Fusion Medical Staffing 1,176 91.55
16 Premier Healthcare Professionals (PHP) 186 91.11
17 Talemed 1,067 89.98
18 FlexCare Medical Staffing 1,727 89.58
19 Medical Staffing Solutions, Inc 226 89.57
20 Health Providers Choice 177 88.80

Best Travel Nursing Companies in Detail

Let’s take a look at each of the companies in detail. As we mentioned above, we urge you to consider each company on the list. They’re all highly rated and you never know which one might be the perfect fit for you.

1. Host Healthcare

Host Healthcare might have had the most amazing year we’ve seen to date. We tallied 357 new reviews for them this year. Their aggregate average score increased from 95.46 to 96.59.

But here’s the thing – their average score on TNC went from 94.9 to 95.6 because they received 99 new reviews with an average score of 98. Additionally, their average score on both Facebook and Glassdoor increased from 4.9 to a perfect 5.0. This truly exemplifies that they put the needs of their Travelers first with the highest Traveler reviews in the industry.

From the moment Travelers begin with Host Healthcare, they are given the highest level of care and attention from recruiters, receiving tailored job searches and pay packages. The traveler-recruiter relationship is woven throughout the Traveler’s assignment, with ongoing direct access to his or her recruiter.

Host Healthcare also offers Travelers dedicated Travel Experience Specialists to make their Travelers’ lives easier with housing and travel experience support and recommendations. Plus, Travelers receive medical coverage from day one.

Host Healthcare was number 3 on Highway Hypodermics list of top travel nursing companies for 2020. Moreover, they’ve been on HH’s, TNC’s and BluePipes’ lists of the best companies every year since 2017. They’ve won a litany of other awards and even launched a policy guaranteeing pay for Travelers quarantined due to exposure to COVID-19 while on assignment.

Host Healthcare is based in San Diego, CA and was founded in 2012. The company has accomplished a ton in a very short period of time and has clearly demonstrated that Host Healthcare is Travel Healthcare that puts you first.

None of this comes as a surprise to anyone who knows Host Healthcare’s founders. They’re an exceptional group and they’ve surrounded themselves with an exceptional team. Kudos to Host Healthcare on an awesome year!

2. Axis Medical Staffing

Axis Medical Staffing had yet another awesome year. We counted 156 new reviews for Axis this year. Their aggregate average score increased from 92.83 to 94.97.

Axis received 59 new reviews from travel nurses on TNC with an average score of 97. They got 77 new reviews on HH and improved their average evaluation score from 18.1 to 18.9. That’s the highest evaluation score of any company on HH!

This is Axis’s fourth straight year on our list. They were number 3 in 2019. They received glowing reviews from travel nurses this past year.

Axis is based in Seattle, WA. They were founded in 2004 and have built a reputation for honesty and integrity. They’re also a super fun group to work with!

3. Gifted Healthcare

Gifted Healthcare is nurse owned and operated. In fact, RNs comprise nearly all of Gifted’s top level management team. They’ve been providing exceptional service since 2006.

We tallied 84 new reviews for Gifted this year. That brings their total number of reviews across all 6 platforms to 365.

Gifted’s aggregate average score increased from 89.91 last year to 91.78 this year. They received 14 new reviews on TNC with an average score of 98! Their score on HH increased a full point to 18.3. They also went from 4.7 to 4.9 out of 5 on Glassdoor.

In addition to staffing travel nurses nationwide, Gifted also does a lot of PRN staffing in Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. That is a great combination for nurses in 2020’s difficult employment market.

Gifted was on our list of best travel nursing companies in 2017 and 2019. They’re passionate about taking care of their clinicians and it shows!

4. Triage Staffing

Triage Staffing is becoming one of the most decorated companies in the industry. If you read their reviews, then you’ll see the lengths they go to in order to keep their travelers happy, safe and informed.

Triage’s aggregate average score is 95.83 on 985 total reviews. Their scores increased year over year on TNC, Indeed and Google.

Triage was number 2 on our list in 2017, number 3 in 2018 and number 4 in 2019. They’ve also been on HH’s list for the last 2 years. Moreover, Inc Magazine recognized them as one of the fastest growing companies in the nation for 3 years running.

Triage started in 2006 as a boutique staffing agency focused on placing Radiology professionals. They’ve grown to staff healthcare professionals of all types. More importantly, it’s clear that they continue to deliver the exceptional service that got them here.

5. United Staffing Solutions (USSI)

United Staffing Solutions, Inc (USSI) has an average aggregate score of 90.40 on 247 total reviews. This year, their scores increased from last year on TNC, HH, Glassdoor and Google.

USSI has been on our list of the best travel nursing agencies 3 out of the last four years. They were on TNC’s list in 2018 and 2019.

If you read USSI’s reviews, you will find that they are appreciated for their honesty, transparency and responsiveness. These are all extremely important qualities in a travel nursing company.

6. Ventura Medstaff

Ventura MedStaff bursts on to our list for the first time at number 6! We say that because they opened for business in late 2018.

But, don’t let their recency fool you. This is a team of highly experienced industry vets who are passionate about delivering world class service. The leadership team boasts 100+ years of combined experience. Many on the team have 10 or more years in the industry.

Speaking of “world class”, I should mention that they are one of the few agencies to have international travel healthcare options as well. Ventura Medstaff is comprised of 4 divisions, all of which work in conjunction with each other. Those divisions are Nursing including LPN, Cath Lab, Therapy and International.

Ventura has amassed a total of 118 reviews with an aggregate average score of 96.87. They also made it on HH’s list of the top travel nursing companies for 2020.

Ventura’s diverse ownership includes Women, Minorities, Veterans, and Nurses. If you read their reviews, you’ll see that travelers love them for their accessibility, responsiveness, honesty, compassion and fun-loving nature. We expect them to be a regular on such lists moving forward.

7. Core Medical Group

Core Medical Group had a great year. They increased their average score on Facebook, Indeed and Glassdoor. Their aggregate average score increased more than 5 points on 84 new reviews. That brings their total number of reviews to 350.

Core Medical Group was founded in 1989. They’re based in Manchester, New Hampshire. Core staffs healthcare professionals of all types in both travel and permanent positions.

8. AB Staffing

AB Staffing had a huge year with their reviews. They nearly doubled their total number of reviews by adding 230 new reviews to bring their total to 475 reviews.

AB Staffing’s aggregate average score increased significantly to 87.47. They received the bulk of their new reviews on Facebook, Google and Glassdoor. Their average scores increased on all three platforms.

AB Staffing was founded in 2002 and is based in Gilbert, Arizona. While AB Staffing is known for their work with Indian Health Services (IHS) and the VA, they have recently branched out into the private market as well, working with state and county facilities.

9. Tailored Healthcare Staffing

Tailored Healthcare Staffing (THS) is a regular on lists of the best travel nursing companies. This is their 4th straight year on our list. They were on HH’s list in 2016 and 2018 and they were an honorable mention in 2019. They were on TNC’s list in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019.

THS’s average aggregate score increased to 91.08 on 130 new scores this year. They earned bonuses for score increases on TNC, HH and Google.

THS is based in Cincinnati, Ohio. They were founded in 2004.

10. Advantis Medical

This is Advantis Medical’s second straight year on our list. That makes them 2 for 2 since they were founded in late 2018.

But, don’t be fooled by the recency. Advantis is run by a group of staffing industry vets with expertise in building world-class teams.

Advantis is passionate about providing exceptional service. They have an average aggregate score of 96.49. That’s one of the highest aggregate scores of all the companies we measure.

11. Cariant Health Partners

Cariant Health Partners makes our list for the first time with an average aggregate score of 91.17. They received a bonus because their score improved on Indeed. Cariant received 75 new scores this year to bring their total number of scores to 97.

Cariant Health Partners is based in Omaha, Nebraska. They were founded in 2001. They staff both nurses and therapists.

Cariant’s parent company, RehabVisions, was started by a married couple, one of whom was a Physical Therapist and one of whom was a Nurse.

12. Next Travel Nursing

Next Travel Nursing added 79 new reviews this year. That brings their total to 233. Nearly all of their new reviews came from TNC and HH. That’s great because both services accept reviews only from travelers.

Next Travel Nursing’s aggregate average score increased to 87.63. Their scores were up on TNC, HH and Glassdoor.

They were on TNC’s list in 2017 and 2019. They were an honorable mention on HH’s list in 2019.

13. Convergence Medical Staffing

Convergence Medical Staffing has 156 total reviews. 136 of those reviews come from HH and TNC. They received 18 new scores on TNC this year with an average score of 97.9. That’s awesome!

Their aggregate average score is 90.10. Their scores increased on TNC and HH this past year.

Convergence was founded in 2013 and they’re based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Convergence was on our list in 2017.

14. Medical Solutions

Medical Solutions is one of the largest travel nursing agencies in the industry. The reason we point this out is that the other large companies in the industry rarely stand a chance of making it on these lists due to their low review scores.

However, Medical Solutions has an aggregate average score of 85.58 on 1,559 reviews. This means that they’ve been able to maintain exceptional service as they’ve grown. That’s tough to do.

It’s also a great combination for travel nurses. They’re bigger, so they have access to a lot of jobs. Plus, you get great service!

Medical Solutions increased their scores on HH, Indeed and Glassdoor this year. They also increased their aggregate average score. All of this is tough to do when you have a high number of reviews.

Medical Solutions is based in Omaha, Nebraska and was founded in 2001. They were on TNC’s list of best travel nursing companies every year from 2014 to 2018.

15. Fusion Medical Staffing

Fusion Medical Staffing added 243 reviews this year. That brings their total to 1,176. Their aggregate average score is 93.91. That’s really high given the number of reviews they have.

Fusion Medical Staffing was on our list in 2017 and 2018. They were on TNC’s list in 2016, 2017 and 2018. They were on HH’s list in 2018 and they were an honorable mention in 2019.

Fusion Medical Staffing is based in Omaha, Nebraska, and was founded in 2009. Fusion staffs a variety of specialties in the following fields: Nursing, Long Term Care, Cath Lab, Therapy, Laboratory and Radiology. In the fall of 2019, Fusion launched their Cardiopulmonary division, and most recently in June 2020, a Home Health division.

16. Premier Healthcare Professionals (PHP)

PHP has a total of 186 reviews across all 6 services we track. 124 of those reviews are on Highway Hypodermics. They’ve made it on HH’s list of top travel nursing companies every year since 2014 at least!

This year, PHP’s aggregate average score increased to 85.16 which gave them a bonus in our scoring. They also got a bonus because their score increased this year on HH.

PHP was founded in 1986! They staff nationwide and internationally. They work with RNs, LPNs, and CNAs.

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17. Talemed

Talemed is a regular fixture on the best travel nursing company lists. They were on our list in 2017 and 2019. They’ve been on both TNC’s and HH’s list every year since 2014!!

Talemed added 194 new reviews this year. That brings their total number of reviews to 1,067. They have an average aggregate score of 90.01 which is down slightly from last year.

Talemed is based in Loveland, Ohio and was founded in 2006.

18. FlexCare Medical Staffing

It’s no surprise that FlexCare Medical Staffing is on our list. We’ve referred to them as the most decorated travel nursing agency of all time.

FlexCare has amassed a whopping 1,727 total reviews. That makes them the company with the most reviews on our list. They have an aggregate average score of 92.76.

FlexCare has been on our list every year. They’ve been on TNC’s list every year since 2014! They’ve been on HH’s list 10 times including this year!!

19. Medical Staffing Solutions, Inc

Medical Staffing Solutions, Inc (MSSI) has 226 total reviews. They have an average aggregate score of 91.71.

174 of MSSI’s reviews come from TNC. They have an average score of 94.3 on TNC. They’ve been on TNC’s list numerous times since 2014 including multiple Gold place finishes.

20. Health Providers Choice

Health Providers Choice has a total of 177 reviews. 127 of those reviews are from Highway Hypodermics. They have an aggregate average score of 89.43 across all review sources we measure.

Health Providers Choice has been on HH’s list of top travel nursing companies every year but one since 2014. Moreover, they have multiple first place finishes on the list!

About BluePipes’ Scoring System for the Best Travel Nursing Companies 2020

Again, our scoring system is fairly complex. Therefore, we think it’s important for us to provide details on how it works.

The Sources We Use to Determine the Best Travel Nursing Companies

We collect scores for each company from 6 review sources and enter the scores into a spreadsheet. Here are the 6 sources we collect scores from:

Rating Services We Aggregate

  1. Highway Hypodermics
  2. Travel Nursing Central
  3. Facebook
  4. Indeed
  5. Glassdoor
  6. Google

Traveler vs. Internal Staff Reviews

Each of these review sources is unique in its own way. However, HH and TNC allow reviews only from healthcare professionals. The others allow reviews from anyone.

We include the other sources for several reasons. First, we believe that if a travel nursing company is good for travelers, then it’s also good for the internal staff and vice-versa. If you look at the actual reviews, then you can see that this is actually true in most cases.

Second, we use the other review sources because so many people rely on them as a source of reviews. Therefore, we wouldn’t get a clear picture if we excluded them.

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Finally, the other review sources have tons of reviews because the services simply get more traffic. At the pace the other review sources are growing, they will surpass the niche review sources within a couple of years if they have not already.

Review Solicitation and Fake Reviews

Anyone who relies on reviews to evaluate goods and services must be aware that “review solicitation” exists. Note that we’re not talking about “fake reviews”, which are a different problem.

Review solicitation is when reviewees solicit reviews from their employees and/or users. For example, some agencies may share links to review the agency with their travelers and/or employees. We’re okay with that because the results could go both ways.

Fake reviews are reviews from people who do not have experience using the service they are reviewing. For example, the reviewee might purchase reviews from a third-party service. We’re not ok with fake reviews.

Controlling for Problems

That’s why we check for fake reviews. We also have a host of other rules and guidelines designed to ensure against other problems like small sample sizes and annual surges in the number of review scores for individual companies.

After we enter all the scores and run the calculations, we check each of the top companies to make sure they meet our guidelines. Each year, many companies do not qualify.

Most of the time, they don’t qualify because they did not meet the minimum requirements. Every once in a while, we disqualify companies because we suspect they engaged in foul play.

Sample Breakdown of a Score from the List of Best Travel Nursing Companies

With all that in mind, let’s take a look at a detailed sample breakdown of our scoring. We’ll use Triage Staffing’s scores. They are number 4 on our list this year.

Minimum Requirements

First, we find the number of reviews and the average score for each rating service and enter them into our spreadsheet. Our minimum requirements are as follows:

Minimum Requirements for Best Travel Nursing Companies

  1. A company must have a minimum of 50 total reviews across all platforms. That’s not 50 for each platform, but 50 for all platforms combined.
  2. A company must have a minimum of 15 new reviews from healthcare professionals in the last year.

Both of these requirements are designed to ensure that we have an acceptable sample size. For example, it wouldn’t be very useful if a company could make our list with 5 5-star reviews. It also wouldn’t be very useful if a company made the list with 100 reviews from their internal staff and none from their travelers.

Our sample company, Triage Staffing, has 958 total reviews. Therefore, they meet our minimum requirement of 50 total reviews.

Additionally, they had 304 new reviews this year. They received 68 new reviews on TNC and 32 new reviews on HH. Therefore, they definitely had more than 15 reviews from travelers in the last year.

The Aggregate Average Score

Next, we calculate the “Aggregate Average Score”. This is a weighted average of all the scores from the 6 review sources.

To accomplish this, we must use a common scoring scale. You see, different rating services have different scoring scales.

TNC uses a 100-point scale. HH uses a 20-point scale.  The others use a 5-point scale.

We convert them all to a 100-point scale. Here’s exactly how we calculate the Aggregate Average Score.

We begin with the scores.

Triage Healthcare Staffing Reviews
Source Scores Average
Travel Nursing Central 147 91.2
Highway Hypodermics 32 18.6
Facebook 228 4.9
Indeed 101 4.6
GlassDoor 159 4.8
Google 291 4.9

Next, we add the number of reviews to arrive at the total number of reviews.

Triage Healthcare Total No. of Reviews
Travel Nursing Central 147
Highway Hypodermics 32
Facebook 228
Indeed 101
GlassDoor 159
Google 291
TOTAL 958

Next, we calculate the weighted total for each review source. This is also where we convert all the scores to a 100-point scale. To do so, we multiply the scores by 20 for the rating services that use 5-point scales. We multiply by 5 for the rating service that uses a 20-point scale.

Here is how that breaks down for Triage Staffing.

Triage Healthcare Staffing Weighted Total Value
Source Equation Total
Travel Nursing Central 147 * 91.2 13,406.40
Highway Hypodermics 32 * 18.6 * 5 2,976
Facebook 228 * 4.9 * 20 22,344
Indeed 101 * 4.6 * 20 9,292
GlassDoor 159 * 4.8 * 20 15,264
Google 291 * 4.9 * 20 28,518
TOTAL 91,800.4

Finally, we divide the weighted aggregate total by the total number of reviews. Here is what we got for Triage Staffing:

Triage Healthcare Staffing Weighted Average
Weighted Aggregate Average Score
91,800.4 / 958 = 95.83

Aggregate Difference Score

Now that we have the average score, we can calculate the “aggregate difference score’. This score rewards or penalizes a company based on the difference between this year’s and the previous year’s aggregate average score.

Simply put, we subtract last year’s average score from this year’s average score. If the result is positive, then the company gets a bonus. If the result is negative then the company gets a penalty.

The aggregate difference score has the following guidelines:

Minimum Requirements for the Aggregate Difference Score

  1. To qualify for this score, a company must have had more than 50 total reviews in the previous year. This qualification ensures some modicum of adequate sample size.
  2. We cap this score at 5 points per company. This qualification also works to ensure some modicum of adequate sample size.

For example, Triage Staffing’s aggregate average score for 2019 was 95.6802752. Their aggregate average score for 2020 is 95.82505219.

So, we subtract 95.6802752 from 95.82505219. We are left with + 0.144776963.

Therefore, Triage Staffing receives a bonus of + 0.144776963. We add that bonus to their aggregate average score for 2020. 95.82505219 + 0.144776963 = 95.969829153.

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And yes, all those decimal places are necessary. For example, our number 6 and 7 companies are separated by less than .04 of a point.

The Individual Difference Score

Finally, we calculate an “individual difference score” for each rating service. It’s similar to the aggregate difference score. However, in this case, we give bonuses or penalties based on the difference between last year’s score and this year’s score for each rating service.

The Individual Difference Score has several guidelines and qualifiers. We choose to keep this scoring mechanism private to ensure that our scoring system cannot be easily copied.

However, please contact us if you are a traveler our staffing agency who would like a full breakdown of everything. We’ll gladly reveal and discuss all the calculations, guidelines and qualifiers.

That was a lot of wonky number crunching! If you’ve made it this far, then you’re probably ready for a nap!! But, you’re an expert on our scoring system.

As always, we hope you found this information useful. Please contact us with any questions or concerns about our ranking system. And, join BluePipes for free so you can manage your travel healthcare career with ease!