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With baby boomers getting older and life expectancy increasing in the world, the demand for a nursing agency is rapidly increasing. Whether it is about treatment or regular checkups, the healthcare industry is playing an impactful role in our lives.
None of us is certain about tomorrow. However, the health care industry seems to know so much and could possibly be the savior of our time. When it comes to health care we cannot forget about the importance of nurses.
In this article, we would like to discuss how to start a nursing agency.
What is a Nursing Agency?
A nursing agency is usually the name for a company providing temporary nursing staff to health care facilities.
It’s a business that provides nurses and health care assistance to people who need them. Nurses are available to hire on temporary contracts to get hired by hospitals, care homes, and other facilities during busy hours or to simply cover for staff absences.
In most countries, nursing agencies are in high demand. So, they are highly successful. With only 10 employees you can make $1 million in the second year of the initial launch.
How to Start a Nursing Agency?
Now that you have a great understanding of what a nursing agency is and what they do, let us discuss how to start a nursing agency in this day and age.
1. Draw a Nursing Agency Business Plan
The best way to have a successful company is by making a detailed plan and organize your thoughts and start planning your finances. Thinking about plans will prepare you for questions and challenges that you may face as you are moving forward with opening a nursing agency. Everyone has their own way of coming up with a business plan.
The business plan depends on your budget and the time that you are going to invest in the company. However, we will mention 7 key sections that are must-haves in the planning phase of opening a new business and more specifically starting a nursing agency.
Management Summary
This section should be used to define and summarize the business and should briefly point out that you are a nursing agency. Imagine you are writing an introduction to an essay.
Describe the Company
In this section, fully describe the company and your plans for the company and make sure there’s a goal defined for the company.
Services
As you can probably tell by the name of this section, you have to explain the services you are going to offer as a nursing agency. However, the name of the company is self-explanatory. Thus, this section can be brief but make sure to explain everything in detail.
How can you differentiate your nursing agency from other nursing agencies in the industry? What are your usual services? What are your unique services? How will you deal with unhappy clients? You need to plan everything ahead to prevent chaos from ever happening.
Marketing
In the marketing section, you have to provide information about the targeted market. Are hospitals your only market? You have to find your competitors and evaluate their services and prices in the targeted market. Furthermore, you have to establish a plan and budget for your marketing.
How much are you willing to spend on advertisement? You need to plan out email marketing campaigns and attend conferences. In addition, it is necessary to have a social media presence to help your website’s SEO.
Operation
In the operation section, you have to explain how you are going to run the nursing agency. The more detailed it is the better. How are you going to organize your staff? A lot of companies that work in the staffing industry, often organize their staff by their qualifications, availability or experience.
In this industry, you will need to have an office for coordinators, applicants and recruiters to work. The office should have a front desk to greet people and point visitors to the right departments.
Management
In this section, you have to define what type of supplies and facilities you need to operate the nursing agency. In this phase, it is very important to find the right type of building and location of your office. Keep in mind, you need to have a room in the office dedicated to interviews and meetings with potential clients and another room to store paperwork (contracts).
Financial
This section is very important. You need to plan out the possible expenses, budget and cash flow. In addition, you need to have some sort of timeline for the cash flow. For example, a monthly cash flow budget.
Luckily, Google already has some pre-designed templates that can help you get started.
2. Register Your Nursing Agency
The next step to start a nursing agency is registering it. According to government policies in almost every country that you are in, every organization has to register their company name under laws and must achieve the right licenses to operate in the targeted industry.
Anywhere in the world, it’s normal to get sent to jail should you get caught working without the right licenses.
Every government operates differently when it comes to staffing agencies and more specifically nursing agencies. However, it is very common that you are required to obtain an LLC.
LLC is short for a limited liability company. As mentioned above, the registration process is different in every country or state. So, make sure you have done your research before starting the process.
3. Choose the Best Location for Your Nursing Agency
In today’s market, everything is moving forward in the digital world. For example, you can have a virtual office and connect it to Google apps and work basically from anywhere. However, to start a nursing agency, it is very important to choose the right location for the office.
You need to be close to potential clients. This depends on your targeted market. If you are going to work with hospitals, make sure the office location is close to nearby hospitals.
4. Draw the Nursing Agency Marketing Plan
The marketing plan should cover the important aspects of how your nursing agency will promote and advertise its services to the targeted market and licensed nurses who may be interested to work under your agency.
There are many social media marketing plans that you can choose from. Whether it’s Facebook ads or Google+ for business.
The marketing plan should cover almost every possible plan and then you need to decide which one works best for the agency based on the budget, targeted market and people who work for you.
Typical marketing may include, direct mailing or cold calls, billboard rental, newspaper advertisement, and discounted packages. The marketing plan could change monthly based on how well the agency is doing.
5. Go Online: Start an online nursing agency
In the digital marketing era that we are living in today, having an online presence is very important. For this reason alone, you must consider creating a website where you can showcase the services you offer and interact with your customers. In addition, having a website allows you to promote the agency on social media platforms.
There are many website builders in the market that you can use to create a website. However, the WordPress platform is the most flexible and complete content management system that can be utilized to create a professional-looking website.
With WordPress, you can use plugins to add or remove functionality and by using premium themes, you can have a fully responsive and SEO-friendly website that is supported by major web browsers and mobile phones.
In addition, since WordPress is SEO-friendly it can tremendously help you with the local SEO. In another article, we have explained what is local SEO and how to optimize it. As a business with a physical address, investing in local SEO is a must.
So, to start a nursing agency, it is crucial to plan for having a professional website.