Welcome to the Transform Awards Winner Spotlight Series, celebrating innovation and leadership in reshaping industries and workplaces globally. These awards commend individuals and companies at the forefront of transformation, setting new standards and challenging the status quo. Recognized for their people-centric and visionary approaches, our awardees are the global changemakers pioneering advancements in business, entrepreneurship, and beyond. This series shines a light on their achievements and the impactful ways they’re moving the world of work forward.
About The Innovator: Transformative Tech of the Year Award
This award recognizes the company with the most transformative tech-enabled solutions and products impacting how we work and live.
About Our Transform Awards Winner ShiftMed
ShiftMed is a leader in healthcare workforce solutions that connect hospitals and skilled nursing facilities to qualified and credentialed healthcare professionals. ShiftMed serves more than 2,000 enterprise healthcare partners in 110 markets nationwide by offering innovative workforce technology combined with an on-demand W-2 marketplace. ShiftMed’s on-demand platform streamlines the delivery of care services and supplies healthcare providers with compliant, credentialed workers to fulfill their staffing needs. Featured on The Today Show and The Wall Street Journal.
Let’s hear from Todd Walrath, ShiftMed’s CEO, what made them stand out amongst the rest!
Initiative Background
Transform: Please provide a brief description of the award-winning initiative:
Todd: ShiftMed provided tech-enabled solutions and products impacting how we work and live.
Transform: How does this initiative impact workplaces, team cultures, or communities?
Todd: Our healthcare system has been grappling with substantial understaffing in recent years, and hospitals have been forced to spend heavily on contractors and travel nurses to ensure their facilities can continue to operate day-to-day. These workforce gaps disrupt the entirety of the care delivery ecosystem, affecting not only healthcare organizations but the well-being of providers and even patients.
We created ShiftMed to solve these issues with a streamlined platform that connects healthcare facilities to qualified professionals quickly and efficiently. Our technology helps fill open shifts promptly and ensures that staffing needs are met with compliant, credentialed workers. By providing a direct W-2 marketplace and innovative workforce software tools, ShiftMed empowers healthcare providers to navigate workforce challenges effectively, improving care delivery and supporting the well-being of our healthcare workforce.
Initiative Journey
Transform: What inspired the need to create tech-enabled solutions and products to impact the way people work and live?
Todd: The idea for ShiftMed was born out of the persistent challenges faced by healthcare facilities in staffing and managing their workforces efficiently. The healthcare industry has long grappled with issues such as workforce shortages, unpredictable demand for staffing, and the need for a more flexible and responsive approach to scheduling.
Our goal with ShiftMed is to improve healthcare staffing by providing a platform that connects qualified healthcare professionals with facilities in need, in a seamless and on-demand approach. We understand that healthcare doesn’t adhere to a 9-to-5 schedule, and traditional staffing models often fall short of meeting the dynamic needs of the industry.
ShiftMed’s platform addresses these challenges by empowering healthcare professionals to take control of their schedules, allowing them to pick up shifts that align with their availability and preferences. Simultaneously, healthcare facilities gain access to a pool of pre-screened and credentialed professionals, reducing the time and effort spent on traditional recruitment processes and enabling them to fill shifts quickly and efficiently.
ShiftMed is about more than just filling shifts; it’s about creating a healthcare ecosystem that adapts to the evolving demands of the industry, ultimately benefiting both healthcare professionals and the patients they serve.
Transform: How does this initiative align with your company’s mission and vision?
Todd: Our goal is to help healthcare systems find reliable staffing solutions while also making life easier for nurses. Our platform not only taps into the local workforce to fill open shifts but also gives facilities more flexibility and helps them find long-term staffing solutions. Our approach has been effective in reducing costs and supporting our mission of improving patient care quality. In the past year, ShiftMed has made significant strides in providing these solutions and has received positive feedback from providers and facilities across the country.
Impact and Benefits
Transform: Who benefits from your initiative, and in what ways?
Todd: ShiftMed’s initiative benefits health systems across the country by helping them save on expensive travel nurse costs and reduce turnover rates. With the increasing need for flexible workers, our workforce model is changing how healthcare organizations connect with local nursing professionals to fill open shifts. Our platform simplifies recruitment and onboarding by letting healthcare facilities post shifts for local, qualified nurses to claim. This technology facilitates smooth transitions from on-demand roles to permanent positions, serving as a bridge for health systems in hiring.
We also prioritize healthcare professionals’ well-being by providing them with flexible schedules, offering same-day pay, and additional non-wage-based incentives such as access to educational opportunities and benefits like UberHealth. This investment not only fosters a positive work environment for our nurses but also translates into better job satisfaction and reduced burnout.
Insights and Learning
Transform: What have you learned from the communities or teams you’ve worked with through this initiative?
Todd: Our team at ShiftMed has had extensive direct interaction with nurses, providing us with valuable insights into their needs and motivations for using an on-demand platform. We’ve discovered that flexibility isn’t just a preference for nurses; it’s often a necessity driven by unpredictable life events. Many healthcare professionals face rigid scheduling constraints, leaving little room for adjustments. Nurses who have joined ShiftMed shared stories of turning to our platform due to unexpected family obligations, mental fatigue, and conflicts with continuing education that they couldn’t accommodate elsewhere. Hearing these firsthand experiences has allowed us to connect with new nurses experiencing similar challenges and seeking solutions to combat burnout from their previous work environments.
Transform: In what ways does your company invest in its people’s innovation, learning, and growth?
Todd: ShiftMed has forged impactful partnerships with a shared goal of supporting nurses in their career growth and development. In 2024, we launched a partnership with OpusVi, a leading provider of workforce development solutions for healthcare organizations. Together, we offer easier access to in-demand degree programs, leadership courses, upskilling certifications, and other educational offerings. This collaboration plays a vital role in our goal of recognizing and addressing the challenges faced by healthcare workers balancing personal and professional lives. Our flexible scheduling, coupled with OpusVi’s educational offerings, ensures nurses can focus on their growth without compromising their work commitments.
Our partnership with UberHealth addresses external factors that impact workers’ success and growth when they have a transportation barrier. Many nurses struggle with transportation issues, with a significant percentage experiencing last-minute work cancellations due to unreliable transport. ShiftMed’s collaboration with UberHealth provides nurses with access to dependable transportation through a seamless integration with the ShiftMed app. This empowers them to accept more shifts and serve a broader area within their city, enhancing their career opportunities and overall well-being. To date, ShiftMed nurses have benefited from over 20,000 rides through this partnership.
Growth and Future Plans
Transform: What are the future plans for your initiative? How do you plan to expand or evolve?
Todd: Our focus moving forward is to continue to expand our presence in acute health systems across the country. As we grow, we aim to work with our clients to be more than just a temporary staffing solution.
Our expansion efforts go beyond hospital facilities; we’re also implementing strategies to attract more nurses to ShiftMed. We’re committed to evolving our platform to benefit healthcare professionals and facilities alike, offering a range of options to meet their needs. In the past year, ShiftMed has grown to a pool of over 350,000 credentialed healthcare professionals, and we’re dedicated to maintaining our competitive edge by continuing to provide unique benefits tailored specifically to nurses.
Advice and Reflections
Transform: What advice would you give to companies looking to create similar positive impacts?
Todd: For companies aiming to create a positive impact, my advice is to prioritize building strong relationships across your community, users, and consumers. Collaboration is crucial when addressing significant challenges like healthcare worker shortages. Companies can create effective solutions and achieve success by fostering partnerships and working together towards common goals. Remember, the collective effort of your team, clients, and collaborators is key to making a meaningful impact and driving positive change.
Transform: Share a specific lesson or challenge your company faced during this initiative and how you addressed it.
Todd: ShiftMed’s transition from supporting only post-acute and long-term living facilities to hospital systems represented a significant shift. Hospitals present a larger scale of complex needs that demand careful attention for guaranteed success.
Our journey into acute care began with a pilot program at SSM in St. Louis, where we prioritized building strong relationships based on collaboration and client feedback. The success of this initial phase, demonstrated by exceptional performance from our on-demand workforce, motivated ShiftMed to forge unique partnerships with other leading health systems nationwide.
We believe in avoiding a “one size fits all” approach, recognizing the dynamic nature of the healthcare industry. By closely collaborating with hospitals, we tailor our solutions to their specific needs, ensuring a mutually beneficial partnership. Our commitment to continuous improvement is driven by real-world feedback from clients, which guides us in refining our workforce model to better serve the evolving demands of healthcare.
Industry Insights
Transform: What significant trend does your company believe will shape the future of workplaces, team cultures, or communities?
Todd: I believe a major trend shaping the future of workplaces, team cultures, and communities is the transformation of healthcare’s workforce. This shift is driven by several key factors, including changes in the demographics of healthcare professionals, advancements in technology, and the adoption of new labor models.
Many HCPs are experiencing burnout, leading to the loss of experienced nurses after the pandemic. At the same time, new nurses entering the field have higher expectations for work accommodations. As a response, health systems are turning to flexible work models like ShiftMed’s on-demand workforce, allowing nurses to choose when and where they work.
Additionally, technology is playing a central role in improving recruitment, scheduling, onboarding, and retention strategies within these alternative workforce models. Health executives are exploring these solutions more actively, recognizing their positive impact on staff satisfaction and retention rates.
Check out our other Transform Spotlights on the blog to learn more about our Global Ambassadors. People-First Leaders, Authors, Award Winners, and more!