The Ultimate Guide to Travel Nursing Company Ratings and Reviews
I’ve been observing and researching travel nursing company ratings and reviews for over 10 years in order to create BluePipes’ annual list of the best travel nursing companies. I’ve learned that evaluating travel nursing companies thoroughly and accurately is quite difficult. Based on that experience, here is my ultimate guide to travel nursing company ratings, reviews and reputation research to help travel nurses find amazing companies to work with.
Why You Should Research Travel Nursing Company Reviews and Reputation
Travel nursing companies provide a wide range of services that can have a profound effect on a travel nurse’s experience. Meanwhile, their services are not commodities. In other words, these companies differ in their approaches and abilities to deliver these services.
For example, travel nursing companies play a big role in landing jobs for travel nurses. In this regard, their ability to build trusting relationships with hospitals has an impact on the hospitals’ hiring decisions.
Travel nursing companies also manage payroll, benefits, credentialing and travel arrangements. Additionally, they serve as a liaison between the travel nurse and the hospital. Some companies do a great job with these services and others are horrible.
It’s important to note that travel nursing recruiters also play an important role in delivering the travel nursing company’s services. A bad recruiter can make a good agency seem bad and a great recruiter can make a bad agency seem good.
That said, I’ve written an article which covers tips for finding great travel nursing recruiters. So, in this article, I’ll discuss recruiters only as needed. I encourage you to review the article on recruiters for additional information.
General Information About Travel Nurse Company Ratings and Reviews
Different rating and review resources have different characteristics and nuances. I’ll cover many specific examples below. However, there are many general characteristics that apply to travel nurse agency ratings and reviews overall.
Travel Nurses Need to be thorough
First, there are tons of rating and review services. Often times, the ratings on one service are completely different than the ratings on another service.
Meanwhile, the ratio of travel nurses to travel nursing agencies is not that high. I point this out because the fewer customers a service or product has, the more difficult it is for that service or product to get reviews. As a result, you may find it difficult to find any one review source that has the critical mass of reviews necessary for you to confidently research and evaluate a travel nursing company.
Therefore, I encourage travel nurses to check as many resources as they can find when they are evaluating travel nursing companies. It’s the only way to ensure that you’re getting the complete picture.
Organic ratings and reviews skew negative
While you’re perusing reviews, it’s important to remember that studies indicate people are more likely to leave bad reviews than they are to leave good reviews. Negative experiences tend to illicit stronger feelings which motivate people to act.
Many travel nursing agencies practice reputation management
On the flip side, it’s also important to note that many travel nursing agencies practice online reputation management. Essentially, they encourage their happiest travel nurses to leave positive reviews. For example, the agency might provide nurses with links to the agency’s review pages for convenience.
The agencies might also request review services to take their bad reviews down. They will also monitor and respond to reviews when they are able to.
Is the review important to you?
Finally, an agency may receive a high or low score based on some criteria that is meaningless to you. For example, the agency may receive bad reviews for the travel nurse housing it provides. But if you don’t take company provided housing, then this shouldn’t matter to you.
Consider the scoring system
Next, I recommend that you consider the scoring system when you’re checking reviews. The five-star rating system is the most common. However, some services use a Binary Rating System. For example, you choose between thumbs up and thumbs down.
Some services use a criteria-based system where the reviewer rates the company on several different criteria. The service then averages all the ratings together for the final score.
In any case, it’s important to consider the review system to make sure you know what constitutes a good or bad score. Also, you’ll need to make sure you’re able to compare scores across platforms.
Travel Nurse Company Ratings on General Review Sites
With all that in mind, let’s take a look at the various rating and review options beginning with the “general review sites”. This category of review websites includes well-known names like Indeed, GlassDoor, Facebook and Google. I refer to these services as “general” because they are not specific to travel nursing.
Generally, these websites tend to have a higher volume of reviews than niche sites dedicated to travel nursing. That’s simply because they get more traffic overall than the niche websites do.
Additionally, the general rating services don’t discourage internal employees, like recruiters, from leaving reviews. I believe that’s okay because I believe companies tend to treat their internal and contract employees similarly. However, you may feel differently. If so, then you might want to drill down to read the actual reviews in an effort to differentiate reviews of travel nurses from reviews of internal staff.
Indeed and Glassdoor for Travel Nursing Company Reviews
Indeed and Glassdoor are both owned by the Japanese recruitment giant Recruit Holdings. While they operate separately, their review services are quite similar to one another.
Both services are dedicated to employment reviews. They both use a 5-star rating system. And they both have a significant number of reviews.
One thing to note is that you may find multiple variations of the same company on both websites. To clarify, the same travel nursing company might have multiple pages, each with its own set of reviews.
Despite that, if I was forced to pick the best resources for travel nursing company ratings and reviews, Indeed and GlassDoor would be my choices.
Facebook for Travel Nursing Company Reviews
At the other end of the spectrum, Facebook would be my choice for the worst resource for travel nursing company ratings and reviews. There are several reasons for this.
First, Facebook changed their rating system a few years back. They went from a star rating system to a binary rating system. However, they kept the reviews from the old system and came up with some funky way to combine the two into one score.
One of the many problems is that some of the written reviews from the original scoring system are negative, but the corresponding scores are positive and vice versa. It’s a mess.
For example, the review says, “This company is terrible.” The review score for the same review shows that the user “Recommends” this company. Clearly, they do not recommend the company and so we can’t trust the score.
Also, Facebook reviews have tons of spam. For example, the reviewer will “recommend” the travel nursing company and then write a review about how you should contact Mike in The Bahamas to claim your $25k in Bitcoin.
Additionally, Facebook’s reviews lack key features. They’re not sortable or searchable. They’re not even paginated.
Finally, the review counts jump all over the place. One day a company will have 300 reviews, the next they’ll have 150 reviews and the following they’ll have 423 reviews.
Like all things Facebook, Facebook’s reviews are a total train wreck.
Google for Travel Nursing Company Reviews
Google has become a solid resource for travel nursing company reviews over the last couple of years. This is largely because the volume of reviews has increased dramatically. However, there are some issues that travel nurses should be aware of.
How to find Google reviews for travel nursing companies
First, finding a travel nursing company’s Google reviews can be tricky sometimes. The reason is that Google doesn’t always show the reviews when you do a Google search for the company name.
You see, the Google feature that displays the reviews is called “Google Business Profile”. The problem is that this feature is for “local businesses”. So, Google might not show the Business Profile if you search for the business while you’re outside the business’s local area. Instead, Google might show the “Google Knowledge Panel” which does not include the reviews. Or, they might show nothing at all.
Obviously, this is a problem for travel nurses because they’ll almost always be outside a travel nursing agency’s local area when they are researching the travel nursing agency. Let’s look at an example and see how we can fix it.
I’m in Sacramento, California. Aya Healthcare’s headquarters are in San Diego, California. The image below is what I see when I do a Google search for Aya Healthcare. Note that it does not include reviews.
To fix this problem, I conduct a search for Aya Healthcare San Diego. The image below is what I see for that.
So, you should first find the travel nursing company’s address. Then, do a Google search for the name of the company followed by the city it’s in. You may even need to tinker a bit further by adding the exact address.
Reputation management more likely on Google
Next, my experience indicates that travel nursing agencies are more likely to use “reputation management” tactics on Google than they are on other services. I say this for two reasons.
First, many agencies have their highest number of reviews on Google. Even some small companies have massive numbers of reviews on Google. And remember, it’s not really easy to find where to review an agency unless you’re in that agency’s local area when you search for the agency. All of this indicates that agencies are helping their travelers find where to leave reviews on Google.
Second, agencies have an extra incentive to get reviews on Google. Specifically, it could improve their “Search Engine Optimization”. That is, it could help them rank higher on Google.
Fake travel nursing company reviews found on Google
Finally, I’ve found fake travel nursing company reviews on Google more often than I have on other websites. When travel nursing companies are in a position to make our annual list of the best companies, I really dig into their reviews. I read the reviews and research the reviewers if the reviews look suspicious.
On Google, you can check the reviewer’s profile and see all the reviews they’ve added to Google. When I see 20 people review the same exact set of businesses that are spread around the world, I know they’re fake. This is a clear indication that a “review farm” is involved.
While these instances are few and far between, you should still be on the lookout for them.
Careerbliss and Comparably for travel nursing company reviews
Careerbliss and Comparably are the last two general review services worth mentioning here. However, that’s only because they’re so popular. Unfortunately, they’re both terrible for travel nursing company reviews.
Careerbliss hardly has any reviews for travel nursing companies.
Meanwhile, Comparably’s pages indicate that have lots of reviews, but the site doesn’t let you see the actual individual reviews. They only show snippets of reviews grouped together by topic. This is useless at best and fake at worst. Overall, the site is too complicated.
Travel Nursing Rating and Review Websites
In addition to the general review services, there are also review services dedicated to travel nursing. In theory, these websites have great promise.
For example, you can make a fair argument that it’s better for travel nurses to see only how travel nurses rate a travel nursing company instead of seeing how both travel nurses and internal employees rate the company. We could say the same about hospital ratings. Travel nurses face unique circumstances so it’s best to get reviews from only travel nurses.
Additionally, websites dedicated to travel nurse ratings can have rating systems specific to travel nursing. For example, they might ask how knowledgeable or responsive the recruiter is. Or they might ask how welcoming a hospital is of travel nurses.
Unfortunately, websites dedicated to travel nursing reviews and ratings really struggle to achieve the volume of reviews necessary to make them worthy of your attention. They rarely gain visibility on Google. The market is too small and cyclical. A high percentage of them shut down or sell to healthcare staffing companies who use them as lead generation services.
That said, some do gain traction and it’s still important for travel nurses to consider them all. At the end of the day, they are more meaningful than their general counterparts. So, it would be great for the travel nursing community if dedicated services flourished.
Highway Hypodermics
Highway Hypodermics was possibly the most popular travel nurse rating website for over 15 years. Unfortunately, they no longer have reviews after Atlas MedStaff purchased the website in 2024.
I mention them only because their reputation for reviews will probably last for some time and I don’t want readers to think I’ve left them off for some reason.
Many other websites fall into this category. They include TravelNursingBlogs.com, TravelNursingExchange.com, TravelNurseRatings.com and more.
Travel Nursing Central
Travel Nursing Central (TNC) has been around for a really long time and they are still quite popular. The website has a great rating system. Reviewers rank companies on 20 different criteria and the site aggregates the ratings into a final score. Additionally, reviewers can review any company in the industry by selecting from TNC’s list of companies or adding a new company.
TNC used to publish an annual list of the best travel nursing companies. However, they haven’t done so since 2019.
TNC used to be an independent company. However, the website indicates that The Gypsy Nurse now operates it.
The Gypsy Nurse
The Gypsy Nurse is a website dedicated to travel nursing. The website has a job board, a blog, reviews and other services.
Unfortunately, the website allows reviews only for their paying customers. Currently, they list only 21 companies eligible for reviews. Moreover, even those companies have very few reviews.
The Gypsy Nurse also has hospital reviews. In this case, they have over 6,000 hospitals eligible for review, which is great! Hear again though, the website has very few reviews.
Some would consider it important to note that The Gypsy Nurse is owned by the staffing agency Travel Nurse Across America. I don’t think this is particularly important for their review features though.
BluePipes
BluePipes is a healthcare professional network with a vast array of career management tools. They include resume builders, skills checklists, credentialing tools, a job board, a pay calculator and more.
We’ve been publishing an annual list of the best travel nursing companies for over 10 years. However, we didn’t have our own company review feature until late 2024. We currently have very few reviews. We encourage you to review travel nurse companies here!
Vivian
Vivian is a healthcare career platform backed by one of the world’s largest private equity firms, Thoma Bravo. Its offerings include a job board, profile builder and more.
Vivian has among the most reviews for travel nursing companies of any of the niche services. They also have a large number of recruiter reviews.
Great Recruiters
Great Recruiters is a very interesting option for travel nursing company and recruiter reviews. It would seem as though it has tons of reviews for the companies I’ve been able to find. Also, it has a great review system that obtains feedback on a wide range of criteria.
However, I’m having a difficult time understanding exactly how this service works and whether or not it’s a good option for travel nurses to use for researching companies. Let’s dig in.
It’s a premium service
First, it appears as though Great Recruiters is a premium service. That means only companies that pay Great Recruiters can be on Great Recruiters.
I don’t think that necessarily means a service is untrustworthy. And I do believe that the reviews on Great Recruiters are trustworthy.
That said, what happens if a company stops paying? Does the website delist the reviews? If a company gets terrible reviews such that the company’s overall review score is less than desirable, does Great Recruiters display them anyway?
It lacks search features
Which brings me to the second issue. I’m finding it super difficult to navigate the website in order to find the actual reviews. The website doesn’t appear to have a search feature that would allow you to search for companies. Also, it does not appear to have a page or set of pages to peruse the listings.
The only way I’ve been able to find reviews on Great Recruiters is to conduct a Google search for the name of the company followed by Great Recruiters. For example, search for Gifted Healthcare Great Recruiters. This makes it difficult to use. You also don’t know for sure if the search engine will show you the page even if it does exist.
Reputation management
Next, it’s important to note that I believe Great Recruiters is akin to a reputation management tool. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, I think it’s a good thing. Let’s take a look at what I mean.
It would appear as though Great Recruiters works with travel nursing agencies to obtain the reviews. For example, the system allows either Great Recruiters or the agency to solicit reviews from healthcare professionals the agency works with.
This is good because it doesn’t leave the review scores to chance. It ensures that the reviews reflect the agency’s whole body of work.
However, you need to account for that when you’re comparing agencies across platforms. For example, if Agency A has a 5-star rating on Great Recruiters and Agency B has a 4-star rating on Indeed, it doesn’t necessarily mean that Agency A is better than Agency B. That’s because Agency B may very well earn a 5-star rating on Great Recruiters if they were on there.
Finally, it’s important to note that Great Recruiters accepts reviews from healthcare professionals at any stage of the recruitment process. For example, someone who has only had preliminary conversations with a recruiter can leave a review.
Travel Nurse Source and Allied Travel Careers
Travel Nurse Source and Allied Travel Careers are also niche options for travel nursing company reviews. I’m putting them together because they are both operated by Track5 Media.
Both sites have a decent number of reviews. However, you can only see reviews for their paying customers. They’re worth a look nonetheless.
Scrubstr
Scrubstr offers agency and hospital reviews specifically for travel nurses. The review system is great as it collects review scores on a number of different criteria. However, it only displays a single score, so you can’t see scores for the individual criteria.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t have many reviews. Perhaps more importantly, it may not be a functional website any longer. I tried to leave a review and the website returned error messages.
clearlyrated
I have to admit, I’m having a difficult time understanding exactly how clearlyrated works and what exactly they do. However, lots of healthcare staffing agencies use and promote this service, so you’re bound to come across them at some point.
That said, I believe clearlyrated provides software that helps businesses solicit feedback from their stakeholders in the form of reviews. What makes clearlyrated unique is that they help companies group the feedback, or reviews, by category.
For example, travel nursing companies provide services to travel nurses, hospitals and the agency’s own internal employees. clearlyrated allows the agency to solicit feedback, or reviews, separately from each group.
It’s also important to note that clearlyrated requires companies to sign up for clearlyrated’s premium service in order to gain access to clearlyrated’s tools.
Unfortunately, I don’t see a way for visitors to clearlyrated’s website to leave reviews for a company. Therefore, I assume the agencies must invite travelers to review them.
You can use this link to see a list of the healthcare staffing companies on clearlyrated. You can also search for companies using the link.
Best Travel Nursing Company Lists
In addition to the review services we’ve covered so far, there are also a number of “best travel nursing company” lists. Such lists often land on the first page of Google search results for search terms like “best travel nursing companies” or “travel nursing companies”.
In general, you should familiarize yourself with the scoring systems of such lists to ensure that they’re not just listing a bunch of random companies. Also, you should make sure the lists are current. We’ve found some that list companies that have been defunct for over 5 years!
Let’s take a look at some of the more prominent options.
BluePipes Annual Best Travel Nursing Companies List
BluePipes has been publishing an annual list of the best travel nursing companies for over 10 years. We aggregate scores from Travel Nursing Central, Facebook, Indeed, GlassDoor and Google for every travel nursing company we can find. Our scoring system assigns bonuses for score increases and penalties for score decreases from the previous year. Each annual article provides a full explanation of the scoring system and a full breakdown of one company’s score.
Companies do not pay to make it on the list. We strictly adhere to the scoring system.
We create a new webpage each year. This way, visitors can conveniently view the previous years’ results.
The Gypsy Nurse Top Travel Healthcare Agencies
The Gypsy Nurse has published their list of the Top Travel Healthcare Agencies each year since 2020. They have 5 categories and they list 4 companies for each category. The same company can make the list for multiple categories.
According to their website, they hire an independent market research firm, Hanover Research, to survey the Gypsy Nurse’s social media followers and group members. For example, their private Facebook group, the Travel Nurse Network, has over 190,000 members!
Obviously, there are nowhere near 190k travel nurses. Therefore, we assume they take steps to ensure only active travel nurses are submitting reviews. Their 2024 survey had over 1,000 respondents rating over 100 companies.
Some people argue that the results are biased because The Gypsy Nurse is owned by the healthcare staffing agency Travel Nurse Across America. Meanwhile, Travel Nurse Across America (TNAA) is pretty much always on the list.
However, TNAA is not always the best overall company on the list. Moreover, BluePipes’ own rating system confirms that TNAA receives very high review scores on other platforms and they make our list of the best companies quite often. Therefore, it’s not a surprise to see them on the Gypsy Nurse’s list as well.
BetterNurse.org Best Travel Nursing Agencies
BetterNurse.org has been publishing their list since 2022. It looks like they aggregate scores from Indeed and GlassDoor to determine the rankings.
However, they must have some additional criteria they consider or they must consider only a small subset of companies. I say that because we collect scores from Indeed and GlassDoor and a quick look at our data indicates the list would be entirely different.
For example, Maxim Healthcare is on BetterNurse’s list with a score of 3.63. However, AHS Healthcare is not on their list even though they have a higher score of 4.2. And I was able to find a large number of other companies like this.
Finally, it appears as though BetterNurse modifies the same webpage every year. As a result, you’re not able to see the lists from previous years.
Verywell Health
Verywell Health provides healthcare information. The publishing company Dotdash Meridith, which is owned by the digital and media holding company IAC, owns Verywell Health.
Verywell Health first published their list of the best travel nursing companies in 2020. At the time, the list had 6 companies, one for each of 6 categories. The list now has 10 companies. The original 6 are still there in the same categories. The additional 4 each have their own new category.
According to Verywell Health’s article, they reviewed a whopping 20 companies. I say that sarcastically because there are over 300 travel nursing companies.
The article also says, “We independently evaluate all of our recommendations. If you click on links we provide, we may receive compensation.” So, it sounds like Verywell Health somehow evaluates the travel nursing agencies and then asks them if they are willing to pay per click to be on the list. However, I can’t be sure about any of that.
In any case, the list doesn’t really change from year to year. However, they always update the year in the article to make it look fresh.
On the plus side, I can confirm that all the companies on the list, except for one, do receive high review scores on other websites. However, it would appear as though Verywell Health may not conduct very through research.
Landing.com
Landing is a short-term housing marketplace. It appears as though they first published their list of the best travel nursing companies in 2024.
Unfortunately, the article makes no mention of the selection process or selection criteria. Many of the companies on the list receive good reviews on other review websites. However, some do not.
TravelNursing.org
TravelNursing.org published their list of the best travel nursing companies in 2014. It hasn’t changed much since then. In fact, it includes a couple of companies that closed many years ago.
The article does not discuss the selection process or selection criteria. Some of the companies on the list receive bad reviews on other websites.
clearlyrated Best of Staffing
clearlyrated puts out an annual list of the best healthcare staffing companies of the year in three categories. Those categories are Client, Talent and Employee. As I mentioned above, clearlyrated’s software allows agencies to separately survey these segments of their customer base.
clearlyrated does not rank the companies. Companies either make the list or not. However, the requirements to qualify for the list are quite stringent which makes this a great list for travel nurses to check.
To qualify, a company must achieve a “Net Promoter Score” of greater than 50. For those not familiar with the Net Promoter Score, 50 indicates that a lot more people recommend the service than not. People typically say that 50 or more is “excellent”.
In addition to the NPS score, the company must also obtain a minimum number of survey responses as well as a minimum percent of survey respondents.
Again, this is a solid list and I highly recommend travel nurses utilize it.
Travel Nursing Central and Highway Hypodermics
Unfortunately, both Travel Nursing Central and Highway Hypodermics discontinued their annual lists of the best travel nursing companies. I’m listing them here in case readers are unaware.
Key Takeaways for Travel Nurses
Clearly, there are tons of options if you want to research travel nursing companies based on their ratings and reviews. In my opinion, the need to be thorough is the most important takeaway for travel nurses here. I highly recommend that you check all the sources we have listed here when you’re researching a specific company or looking for companies in general. Doing so will give you the clearest picture you can get from rating and review resources.
