Denver Nursing Star Article about Peak Nursing

Peak focuses on quality of nursing, not quantity of nurses

by Douglas Walter
Staff Writer, Denver Nursing Star

The Peak Nursing Team has chipped its way into the nurse staffing market and grown since the company began in Colorado four years ago, but as it grows, it likely will stick to its quality instead of quantity approach as business.

"We are pretty picky about who we are bringing on," said Jeff Higgins, who started the company with his wife, Kim, who is a registered nurse.

Higgins said he probably interviews 20 nurse candidates a month interested in working for the agency, but he’ll maybe hire one of them.

He’s looking for the best nurses; those who can work well with the facilities that he’s staffing for and provide quality nursing for the patients.

Currently, 80 nurses consistently work for the Peak Nursing Team, with another 100 on the register who aren’t that active with the company. It staffs for 45 facilities, mainly long-term care facilities, from Fort Collins to the Four Corners area.

Higgins figures he staffs a fraction of the number of nurses some of the other larger agencies have on their registers.

"We really want to be different, to be the type of company that really works for facilities," he said.

Higgins, who comes from an executive-recruiting background, said the smaller size of Peak allows them to be nimble enough to find the right nurses for the right facilities. Though most of the business is placing for temporary jobs, Higgins said he takes more a long-term placement approach.

He personally visits many of the facilities that Peak staffs, to get the feel of the people and the work environment.

"It’s so we can find a good match," he said. "We try to find someone who is going to work well with the staff."

Jami Torres, a former staffer at Castle Rock Care Center, said Peak nurses always worked well with her staff.

"It was also nice that we were able to build a relationship with the office staff at Peak Nursing that allowed us to find and place the best fit for our facility," she said.

Providing the perfect match is important in a climate where staffing agencies can be looked at as the "bad guys" in hospitals and in long-term care facilities, at least financially speaking, Higgins said. It’s less expensive for administrators to depend on nurses already on the payroll making staffing agencies a financial drain. Higgins acknowledges that fact, but countered by saying that, with nursing shortages, nurses can be overworked and get burned out, which is where the staffing agencies comes into play.

"Everybody talks about burnout, but it’s absolutely more expensive to hire and train new staff than supplementing a staff with an agency," Higgins said.

Much of his business comes from facilities experiencing holes in their nursing schedules due to a variety of factors – such as vacation, emergency leave or their census numbers going up. Facilities that compensate for those changes by cranking up the work hours of its staff to fill in the holes face dealing with burnout issues, and possible resignations, from its nursing staff, he said.

"When I interview nurses and talk about why they left (their former jobs), that’s a constant thing that I hear ... that they were working 60 and 70 hour weeks," Higgins said. "The resounding thing that I hear is that they can’t take it anymore."

Interestingly enough, those are also the nurses that are a good fit for a staffing agency, he said. People who don’t want to work long hours and want a little flexibility in their schedule.

"The nurses that are a good agency fit are looking for flexibility and looking to control their schedule," he said.

Many times, they have families that they need to dedicate time to and a spouse working full-time with benefits – Peak doesn’t offer to pay a portion of health insurance costs for its employees.

"Some people come to the agency thinking that they will go full-time, and it can be done, but they have to be flexible," he said.

That means being able to commute to a variety of places to work. On the other hand, part-time nurses can pick areas where they want to work. Higgins can’t always offer them work all the time, he can let them know when jobs come up around their home. Peak plans to continue to grow, such has look at expanding outside of Colorado’s borders.

"The long-term plan it to branch out; one of our next markets that we want to target is the Minnesota area," Higgins said.

He knows he could grow much faster in Colorado if they took on a partner, but he wants to keep it a localized, locally owned business that can provide something different than the big boys.

"We can still provide that personalized service," Higgins said.

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