In this episode of Elevate Care, AMN Healthcare leaders JB Tanner and Taryn Coates to explore how Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) offers a strategic, scalable solution for health systems navigating new builds and expansions. JB and Taryn break down a recent major project with a Southwest health system. The organization was planning a $200 million tower edition, requiring over 400 hires in just eight months. By leveraging a dedicated RPO team, they successfully recruited highly specialized pediatric roles while maintaining strict regulatory compliance. The results speak for themselves: 95% of critical roles filled ahead of deadlines, time-to-fill dropped from 78 to 47 days, and the health system saw $2.3 million in labor savings. Tune in to learn how an RPO partnership can seamlessly integrate with your internal talent acquisition team to drive efficiency, secure top talent, and keep your next expansion project on track and under budget.
In this episode of Elevate Care, AMN Healthcare leaders JB Tanner and Taryn Coates to explore how Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) offers a strategic, scalable solution for health systems navigating new builds and expansions.
JB and Taryn break down a recent major project with a Southwest health system. The organization was planning a $200 million tower edition, requiring over 400 hires in just eight months. By leveraging a dedicated RPO team, they successfully recruited highly specialized pediatric roles while maintaining strict regulatory compliance. The results speak for themselves: 95% of critical roles filled ahead of deadlines, time-to-fill dropped from 78 to 47 days, and the health system saw $2.3 million in labor savings.
Tune in to learn how an RPO partnership can seamlessly integrate with your internal talent acquisition team to drive efficiency, secure top talent, and keep your next expansion project on track and under budget.
About the Guests
JB Tanner is the Vice President of RPO at AMN Healthcare. With extensive experience in talent acquisition strategy, JB specializes in helping healthcare organizations build scalable recruitment processes that drive long-term success.
LinkedIn/JBTanner
Taryn Coates serves as the Vice President of Business Development at AMN Healthcare. She leads recruitment teams through complex hospital expansions, ensuring alignment with strategic timelines and organizational goals to deliver high-quality patient care.
LinkedIn/TarynCoates.
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Kerry Perez
Welcome back to Elevate Care. I'm your host, Kerry Perez.
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Kerry Perez
Today we're sharing a conversation with AMN health care leaders JB Tanner, vice president of RPO. And Taryn Coates, vice president of business development. They're breaking down how recruitment process outsourcing RPO has become a scalable, strategic solution for health care organizations navigating expansion.
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Kerry Perez
You'll hear how RPO enables health systems to offload the complexity of high volume hiring to dedicated experts, helping them grow faster, stay compliant, and meet critical deadlines.
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Kerry Perez
In this episode, JB and Taryn walk through a major project with the Southwest Health System, preparing for a $200 million Tower Edition.
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Kerry Perez
The organization needed more than 400 hires in just eight months, including highly specialized pediatric roles, while meeting strict quality and regulatory requirements.
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Kerry Perez
They discuss how airmen supported the project with a dedicated pediatric recruitment team,
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Kerry Perez
detailed workforce planning, multi-channel outreach, and integrated technology that provided real time transparency,
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Kerry Perez
and the results were impressive.
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Kerry Perez
95% of critical roles filled ahead of deadlines. Time to fill reduced from 78 days to 47.
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Kerry Perez
$2.3 million in labor savings and a 35% lower cost per hire. Strong retention and patient satisfaction. Full regulatory compliance and an on-time launch.
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Kerry Perez
And if you'd like to explore this case, study even further. We've included a flipping book resource in the show notes.
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Kerry Perez
All right, let's dive into the conversation.
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
My name is JB Tanner. I'm joined by our guests,
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
Taryn Coats. Today's topic is how to staff new builds and hospital expansions.
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
Taryn, you led the recruiting team
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
from your perspective. Tell us about the project and where your team was able to fit in. Yeah. So the project,
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was specifically focused right on the expansion within Plano. And so that's really where my team prioritized their time,
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
I think naturally with the excitement of the expansion, you saw some internal transfers. So there was so not just the natural employee turnover, but due to interest to the new expansion. There was some internal turnover at Dallas, with individuals expressing an interest to move over to the new project in the new units. But I think the biggest focus was just ensuring that the team prioritized their time and energy in alignment with the timeline set in place.
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
So we had an overall go live date. But given the structure, of some of the teams, some were ready to start sooner rather than later. Some were looking for staff following the go live day, and so was just ensuring that our recruiters were in alignment with what made the most sense for the business. Well, and what I remember about that project was how important it was to
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coordinate communication
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and make sure that
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the,
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really worked very closely with the internal talent acquisition team and the admin team to make sure we were all getting the information.
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
And RPO, we've said it a few times. Can you tell me what is an RPO?
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
Yeah. So it it's an acronym for recruitment process outsourcing. I think the biggest differentiator versus like your traditional direct hire staffing, you know, that's more outside vendor or agency style
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
is us actually integrating into the system, following their processes and really just kind of immersing ourselves in the culture. I think the biggest key call out as well is from a candidate experience level.
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
Candidates have, you know, their experience is I'm working with a recruiter,
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
I'm not working with Am in health care. And that's the I think the biggest difference is just the overall candidate experience, because we are truly committed to aligning ourselves, with the organization's overall strategic initiatives, but also culture, which I think is the biggest piece.
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
Why do you think it's important or what kinds of things do you take into consideration when choosing to go RPO versus building internal, and what are the advantages?
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
Yeah, I think in particularly speaking to expansions, right. It's it's a period in time. It's not is there an influx. And obviously the demand on the talent acquisition team, but it's very short lived if you look at the grand scheme of things, and I think the bigger is just component,
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of utilizing an RPO is the scalability.
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And so it's the ability to just add recruiters much more quickly.
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
But at the same token, as the project is starting to come to a completion, start to scale back on the recruitment
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team,
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in alignment with those timelines. And then it all falls on our our hands. Right? You don't have to be the individuals to go through any type of workforce reduction within the team. I think another big piece that comes with the RPO team is just the experience.
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
And having worked with multiple health systems, obviously, you know, it's great when individuals have tenure with an organization, but I think that there's a lot of value in having a partner that's kind of seeing what other health systems are doing and kind of bring in some best practices from across the nation, either with similar health systems or ones that are maybe a little bit different and kind of bring some fresh eyes.
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
And so I think that's a big, component that you get when utilizing an RPO. Yeah. I you took the words out of my mouth. But it's also they gain experience recruiters too. We bring they worked with other health systems but they've done other build out. Oftentimes too,
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
As health systems are evaluating RPO partners for new builds and expansions, what is some of the return on investment and cost savings that you can expect? Right.
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
So a huge priority kind of coming off Covid is right. You know, the cost differentials between contingent labor in their cost staff. And so I think, you know, proactively, planning out these expansions and forecasting and mapping it out to ensure that there isn't a high utilization spike on the contingent labor side, can ensure that there's an ROI,
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cost savings investment.
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
I think on average, it's about 30 to 50% from a contingent labor viewpoint. Yeah, I would say premium labor. So that's that's one thing when we're looking at the cost per hire for a health system internally versus maybe utilizing a partner. You look at the cost of premium labor, which could be internal float ball, it could be PR in, it could be travelers.
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
And really try to optimize that mix of, premium labor to core staff labor. But when you're when you're looking at an expansion like this, you're trying to avoid dipping into premium labor. So you've got these deadlines. And a lot of times they're really concrete, like, this is the day we're opening. Here's one for one opens, here's one for two opens.
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
And you need to have that staff built out without pulling in, either pulling from the other locations or pulling in premium labor, which
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just drives the cost of the project up. Right. When I think about our benefit, though, it's efficiency. So, even though if you look at apples to apples at what it might cost to bring in a contract recruiter compared to a to an RPO, it's the efficiency that the team as a whole can bring.
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
I think one of the benefits of Amnh is,
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
and then has a national skill grass and so and partnering with us and you know,
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
just the access to candidate pipelines and databases, even through our travel partners. Right. And kind of tapping into individuals that maybe traveled for a few years coming off Covid and they're burned out, and we can utilize that same candidate talent pool outside, even not just the Dallas market, but the Texas market as well, and work to lure them.
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
And,
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
Dallas is a super appealing market. We've seen a lot of migration from some of the states that the cost of living is higher. And so it was a little bit more of an easier sell to certain candidates to bring them into the Dallas market,
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
But I will say that we did have, you know, quite a bit of success in and kind of pulling talent from outside the area and bringing them into ensure that we met those headcount numbers. Well, it I think when you shift to pediatrics recruiting. Yes. Dallas is a large metro, but the number of experienced pediatric providers is still limited.
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
And it's important to be able to tap into areas similar to Dallas and other parts of the country. So we can pull in some of the super subspecialties, pediatric providers, pediatrics, and I would say obstetrics as well are in high demand from a recruitment perspective. Many nurses have a desire to kind of move into the working with that type of patient population.
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
But on the flip side,
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more often than not, they are required to have that specific, experience with those patient populations. And so it's finding the balance of obviously, there's a high demand from the available candidate pool and wanting to move to work with those patient populations, but oftentimes they will require already having obtained that experience already.
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
And so I think that's super critical that the recruiters kind of tap into identifying individuals that have worked in similar settings and not just kind of working off, you know, the overall desire
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of clinicians.
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
Going back to the ROI piece, Taryn, you brought up. External candidates and the value of bringing candidates that maybe the organization wouldn't have already had. I think this is a challenge sometimes when health care organizations are evaluating an RPO, oftentimes they think of staffing organizations as more of an agency or a direct hire vendor.
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
One thing that's unique about the recruitment process outsourcing model is that you hand over a department, a specialty, a location that's really where you get the scalability and the efficiency and the RPO recruiters handle. They build a relationship with those hiring managers. They understand the requirements of the roles, and they're able to move the puzzle pieces around, whether they're promotions or internal transfers or external applicants or direct applicants that maybe the organization would have, would have already had the pricing, the cost of the service assumes that, so pricing often in that cost per hire is less than what it would be in a more traditional agency relationship.
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
Exactly. I mean, obviously that's a call out that, you know, we've discussed with past and current partners. And that's why I like to ensure that the RPO experience that we're providing is more of that agency style experience. And so I always joke that, you know, you get agency experience for an RPO pricing.
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
But I think it's, you know, what you call out GBS super important is not only, you know, are we looking at the internal transfers and managing of the application that are flowing in through the careers page?
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
There isn't any disruption in the process internally, but it's also, you know, the requisition or the focus areas that don't have that high demand or that natural, attraction to candidates that are more assertive is ensuring that our recruiters are going towards the passive candidate pool to fill the gaps. I think to get the most out of an RPO program is to ensure that you're aligning the RPO recruiters on those high priority areas.
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
You know, I'm always the first to say PCT is is usually, you know, a quick call out that'll drive, you know, huge application flow. We saw at the on site,
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
career,
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event too, that there was a huge turnout for PCT just in general. And so for you to get the most out of the RPO, experience and what we're providing, does it make sense to necessarily focus RPO in the areas of such as the PCT?
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
For that reason? It's to, you know, put us where you're struggling, like on there's been an increase in the last year and just ally clinicians overall. But the supply still remains,
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
pretty you know, dry in comparison to the number of openings available on the market. And so I think it's critical that the RPO recruiters are spending their time on physical therapists.
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
And, you know, radiology has been a huge call out recently for many organizations, especially because it tends to be the highest revenue generating for a hospital. And so it's critical that, you know, those units stay staffed,
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
from a financial perspective. And so I think that's going to be the biggest piece with RPO as well.
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
Well this year's been tough.
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
On a lot of new builds. And I think of it really the trifecta of a reduction in the research dollars. And this has impacted academic health centers. Mostly. But then there were concerns over just the costs of, of the goods that hospitals are using and what tariffs might do for them.
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
And so this topic I feel like is topical or timely, because as we roll into the next year with new budgets and hopefully with a little bit more stability and funding,
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
we expect there to be more expansions and new builds in the next 12 to 24 months.
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
we know how to staff the expansions and new big builds. So as we start to come into that and talent acquisition leaders are planning on how they're going to accomplish this goal many times with fewer full time talent acquisition,
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staff than they had a year ago.
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We can really step in and fill that gap.
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AMN Healthcare Podcasts
Thank you for joining us today on Elevate Care. If you found this episode valuable, please consider sharing it with a colleague and subscribing to our show on your favorite podcast platform. You can learn more about this episode in our show on our website at AMN Health care.com, and follow us on social media to stay updated on new episodes and the ever changing world of health care.