AMN Executives: Staffing Market Ready to Enter New Growth Cycle

Grace said those trends—and the emergence of some patient access challenges due to staffing—and a broader market upswing helped AMN post the best quarter for its nurse and allied-professionals business since late 2021. That unit accounted for about 60 percent of AMNs $2.7 billion in revenues in the 12 months that ended on Sept. 30 and Grace said winter orders were up 16 percent from the same time a year earlier. On top of that, AMN’s leaders expect the company’s international nurse work to grow by at least 15 percent this year and are seeing signs of growth in its unit focused on physician and leadership searches.

“We have a lot of potential, as we’ll exit 2026, to really have all of our businesses back to a growth cycle,” Scott said.

Scott told the J.P. Morgan gathering that average hours worked among clients have been historically low of late but are poised to grow—and benefit AMN’s financial results when they do. Many providers, he said, are shifting away from a heavy focus on restraining their use of contract labor to a healthier mix of labor spending that ties into longer-term goals.

AMN executives aren’t the only ones seeing the staffing market turn up this year. The leaders of Omaha-based Medical Solutions LLC say healthcare providers are facing new pressure points as the healthcare system evolves. Those trends, they said in a recent blog post, mean staffing shortages won’t go away even as demand become more difficult to predict.

Echoing what Grace and Scott said they’re hearing from many clients, Medical Solutions says a key to staffing success is to leave behind the COVID-era scrambling and think of the longer term: “Flexible staffing works best when it is intentional, budgeted, and supported by healthcare workforce management solutions, not treated as a temporary workaround.”