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The cheapest hour of coverage is one you already employ

Blue Water designs, staffs, and runs internal resource pools for health systems — and yes, a working float pool reduces what you spend with us. We think that is the right trade, and we price the engagement so it works for us too.

Talk about your float pool See the economics

InternalYour badge, your staff

Fixed feeNot a cut of agency spend

PhasedDesign to go-live, planned with you

YoursYou keep the pool if we part ways

A nurse in scrubs walking through double doors between hospital units

The honest version

Why a staffing agency would sell you this

Because the alternative is worse for both of us. Systems that lean on agency for baseline coverage eventually cap their spend, cut suppliers, and go to RFP angry. Systems with a healthy internal pool use agency for what it is actually good at — peaks, hard specialties, and speed — and they stay partners for years.

What usually happens

The pool exists on paper

There is a float pool line in the budget, six people in it, no premium worth taking, and a scheduler who fills gaps by calling agency first because it is faster.

What changes: a differential structure and self-scheduling model that makes the pool the path of least resistance for both the nurse and the scheduler.

What usually happens

Agency covers baseline, not peaks

Contingent labor fills the same units every week at a bill rate built for surge. Nobody planned it; it accumulated one requisition at a time.

What changes: baseline demand moved into the internal pool, agency reserved for genuine peaks and hard-to-fill specialties where it is worth the premium.

What usually happens

Float staff burn out and leave

Pool nurses get the worst assignments, the least notice, and no say in where they go — so the pool churns and the whole thing resets each year.

What changes: competency-based unit clusters, advance-notice rules, and a preference model, so float work is a career choice rather than a punishment.

What we actually do

Design, staff, run — or any one of the three

1 · Design

Demand analysis by unit, shift, and season. Pool sizing, competency clusters, differential structure, float rules, and the governance to keep managers from hoarding. Delivered as a written model you own.

2 · Staff

We recruit the pool as your employees, on your badge — including converting travelers already working your units who would rather stay local. Permanent placement fees apply, disclosed up front.

3 · Run

Day-to-day scheduling, open-shift release, and escalation to external labor only after internal options are exhausted — visible to you in the VMS, with agency use reported as an exception rather than a default.

Start with a demand analysis

Commercials

Priced so we are not paid to fail

A float pool engagement billed as a percentage of agency spend would give us a reason to keep your agency spend high. So we do not price it that way.

Ask for the fee structure See how this sits with an MSP

Fixed monthly program fee for design and management — not a share of contingent spend.
Standard permanent placement fees for pool hires we recruit, disclosed before we source.
The model is yours. If you end the engagement, you keep the design, the data, and the staff. There is no clause that makes leaving expensive.
Agency use reported as an exception in your quarterly business review, with the reason attached — including when the reason was us.
Works with or without an MSP. Plenty of systems buy this first and never need the rest.

Client FAQ

Before you build a pool

Sizing, differentials, union considerations, and how this interacts with contingent labor.

Talk it through

It depends on your variance, not your bed count. We model twelve to twenty-four months of unit-level demand and size the pool to cover the recurring trough-to-peak swing — leaving genuine surge to contingent labor. Undersizing is the common failure; oversizing shows up as idle premium hours within a quarter.

Enough that a competent nurse chooses float work over a fixed unit, and less than your blended agency bill rate. That band is usually wide. The bigger lever is often not money — advance notice, competency-matched assignments, and a say in which units they float to move more nurses than another dollar an hour.

Usually, but the contract drives the design rather than the other way round. Float language, posting rules, seniority, and differential structures are constraints we design within. We will read the agreement before proposing a model, and we will tell you if it will not work.

Yes, on purpose. Baseline coverage moving in-house reduces what you spend with us on travel and PRN. We would rather hold a longer relationship at lower volume than be the vendor you cap and replace at the next budget cycle.

Frequently the fastest way to stand a pool up. Travelers who already know your EMR and your unit are often willing to go local for the right schedule. Conversion terms are agreed before we approach anyone.

Start with the demand analysis, not the contract

Send twelve months of unit-level scheduling and agency data. We will show you where baseline demand is being covered at surge prices — before anyone talks about an engagement.

Request a demand analysis Call (877) 720-9940