Advantis Medical Staffing Travel Nursing Agency Review

Introduction

Travel nursing is a type of medical career in which practitioners travel to assignments at medical facilities around the country or world. The field has grown in popularity considerably, especially since the pandemic, so medical staffing agencies have also expanded to serve the need. With the help of these agencies, health care workers can now opt to work from numerous locations, nationally and internationally, while retaining benefits and job support.

Advantis Medical Staffing is an agency that matches nurses and allied health professionals with assignments in hospitals, trauma and rehab centers, and long-term care, skilled nursing, and assisted living facilities throughout the U.S. The sheer volume of available jobs as well as its large internal recruiting and care teams set Advantis apart from other medical staffing agencies. Additionally, the company’s own AdvantisConnect application allows users to create and manage their accounts from their smartphones.  

We took a closer look at the agency and how it compares to its competitors. 

What Is Advantis Medical Staffing?

Dallas, Texas-based Advantis was started in 2018 by a co-founder of technology staffing company Advantis Global. He was impressed and inspired to create the company by the many nurses and other healthcare professionals who cared for his young son following his diagnosis of Limb-Girdle Muscular Dystrophy (LGMD). As the Advantis About page notes, “Now we’re trying to return the love the best way we know how – by connecting Travel Nurses and Allied Health professionals to their dream assignments at top medical facilities across the U.S.”

Every day, about 7,600 to 8,600 available jobs are posted on the Advantis website. To handle the volume, staff, including more than 150 in-house recruiters and 25 Care Team members, find the right assignments for clinicians, verify licensing, facilitate onboarding, manage administrative requirements, and handle any problems clinicians encounter. 

Reviews suggest that users view Advantis positively: It’s rated 4.1/5 by 78 voters on Glassdoor and the number one nursing company by healthcare networking platform BluePipes in 2021, according to Advantis’ homepage. These high marks are echoed by OR nurse Matty Bradley, RN, who’s worked with Advantis for the past three years. She’s registered with other agencies, but “I always come back to Advantis…Their customer service is top-notch.”

The Website

I found Advantis’ website intuitive and easy to use, with helpful information and colorful graphics, including endorsements from Advantis clinicians and a revolving gallery of photos. The navigation bar is located at the top of the page and remains accessible while scrolling; calls to action are clearly visible.

The landing page includes links to the following pages: Travelers (for travel nursing and allied health professionals), Employers (for medical facilities), Resources, and Explore Jobs. There’s also an About page, which offers information about careers for traveling healthcare professionals, jobs at Advantis, and the company’s background. Navigating the site and searching for assignments was easy, and I did not encounter technical difficulties like errors or loading issues.

The website doesn’t appear to have an FAQ page or a dedicated customer service line, but that may be because live clinician support—be it from recruiters or care team members—is more often used by recruits. 

Sign-Up/On-boarding/Job Search Process

To get started with Advantis, clinicians create an online account and fill out a questionnaire. “I was on-boarded and able to view jobs within minutes,” says Lindsay Modglin, a licensed nurse who analyzed the site. “A recruiter reached out within the hour.” 

Each clinician is assigned their own recruiter, who asks them about their skills and assignment preferences. The recruiter then uses this information to find the highest paid, best match, for the health professional. 

“We typically like to present a clinician multiple opportunities, to increase the chance they receive several offers to choose between,” says Brian Sutter, the company’s Director of Marketing. These opportunities may include jobs that haven’t yet been uploaded to the site. Next, Advantis staff verify licenses, and then either the clinician or the recruiter applies for the position.

Sutter estimates that clinicians usually receive a job offer about 72 hours after signing up. Even clinicians with multiple requirements usually find positions quickly: Bradley and her husband (also a travel nurse), for example, needed to find assignments in the same area, which also had to be near a campground so they can park their RV. Nonetheless, they’ve received multiple job offers in as little as two weeks. 

After a job’s been accepted, Advantis confirms credentials, performs a background check, manages the intake process, and liaises with the facility to make sure the clinician is cleared to start work. The medical facility’s onboarding process takes an average of one to two weeks to complete. 

States/Countries You Can Travel To

Advantis lists available jobs in all 50 states, plus Washington, DC, and Guam. Website searches by state on two different days showed 40% of jobs were located in one of the 10 most populated states (California, Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, and Michigan).

Applicants can also use a 68-item pull-down menu to identify available assignments by job title or by department/type of facility. Job hunters can also search by pay on the AdvantisConnect app, while recruiters can conduct a search based on criteria such as facility size and location attractions.

What Benefits Does the Agency Offer Prospective Employees?

Pay varies depending on the position and specialty, but an ER nurse can earn $3,000 a week, Sutter says. Advantis clinicians are eligible for overtime and health insurance (including dental and vision), which starts on the first of the month after the assignment starts and lasts until the first of the month after the assignment ends. Clinicians can extend their coverage if there’s a break of fewer than 14 days before they start their next assignment.

Advantis also offers 401K accounts, referral bonuses, relocation costs reimbursements, loyalty transportation bonuses for clinicians who extend contracts, and payment via direct deposit. Advantis also provides meals and housing per diems to cover those costs, which are based on GSA rates. Advantis’s housing team also helps clinicians find rental options near their upcoming assignments. 

Eight, 10, and 12-hour shifts are available, as are day, evening, night, and rotating schedules. Staff on assignment are paid weekly. The average length of a contract is 13 weeks, and facilities often offer to extend the contract another 13 weeks. 

Advantis solicits feedback from its clinicians in order to improve these benefits and services. Its efforts seem to be working: “I feel like Advantis really listens to our suggestions,” Bradley notes.  

Accessibility of Service

Clinicians can use text, phone, chat, email, or the AdvantisConnect app to reach out to recruiters, who speak Spanish as well as English. Recruiters try to respond within minutes, Sutter says, but generally, responses are within two hours. Advantis has staff available outside of office hours, “and most of the recruiters work extended hours as well,” he adds.

Clinicians hear from their recruiter several times during the onboarding and job search processes, but the amount of contact depends on the clinicians’ preferences. Recruiters often develop strong relationships with clinicians, as Bradley can attest: “She’s phenomenal,” she says of her recruiter. “At this point, she’s more our friend than our recruiter…. All the recruiters I’ve worked with have been great.”

However, if a clinician isn’t happy with their recruiter, Advantis will assign them to another one. 

Additional Features 

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The AdvantisConnect application allows users to create profiles, upload documents (shared only with the clinician’s permission), search for jobs, and apply for positions. Advantis recently released iOS and Android versions, so clinicians can access AdvantisConnect from their phones. This new version will soon offer time tracking capability. 

The company’s blog (on the Resources page) covers a range of topics, with articles on everything from gift ideas and nurses’ mental health to the importance of diversity and emerging trends in healthcare. New articles—written by staffers and registered nurses—are posted about twice a week. 

Advantis is also active on social media: It posts photos and profiles of health professionals, information about agency staff, links to giveaways, and graphics frequently to its Instagram account, which has more than 3,000 followers. The company also maintains a Facebook page, where it posts new content about twice a week.

Diversity and Cultural Competence

More than 85% of healthcare workers of color have experienced racial and/or ethnic discrimination. While this group is most likely to encounter prejudice from patients, health professionals of color also report discrimination by fellow medical facility staff. 

Advantis states it is committed to affirming clinicians’ identities: “Your gender, your beliefs, your preferences, your skin color, or your bigshot friend make no difference to us,” the company proclaims on its website. “Advantis Medical is a progressive and open-minded collective.”

Company policy notes that Advantis Medical is an equal opportunity employer, and it complies with all laws prohibiting discrimination and harassment of workers based on their “race, color, religion, sex (including gender, pregnancy, childbirth or a medical condition related to pregnancy or childbirth), national origin, ancestry, age, physical or mental disability, genetic information, marital or registered domestic partnership status, military or veteran status or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.” Advantis’s policy is broader and more specific than the one on the EEOC website, and Advantis encourages employees to report any violations of company policy to its Human Resources department without fear of retaliation. 

However, Advantis did not respond to questions regarding the tracking of information or company procedures for addressing clinicians’ reports of workplace discrimination. 

Is This a Good Travel Nursing Agency To Work With?

Upon recent research, the Advantis website had nursing assignments in 34 different specialties available. Departments and specialties with the most available assignments include medical/surgical, telemetry, ER/trauma, ICU, OR, PCU, and labor and delivery units, but there are openings for RNs in everything from case management and dialysis to psychiatry, pediatrics, and wound care. 

For allied health professionals, a review of the job listings showed openings in 33 different areas. Certified surgical, medical lab, and computerized tomography (CT) technologists will find the most opportunities. Jobs in hospitals and medical centers appear to be plentiful—nurses seeking assignments in long-term acute care hospitals or skilled nursing facilities may want to look elsewhere. 

“My experience with my recruiter has been phenomenal,” says Cylie Lappin, RN. She’s a medical/surgical specialist who’s been working with Advantis for almost a year. “Anytime [I have] a question or issues, my recruiter helps get it taken care of.” For instance, when a manager at her facility scheduled her for a shift she was supposed to have off, her recruiter made sure the error was corrected. 

Who Is It For?

While Advantis focuses on job opportunities for registered nurses, the sheer volume of jobs available means that there are many opportunities for other health professionals as well, especially medical imaging technologists. 

Advantis’ pay range is lower than the average pay among other travel nursing agencies Verywell Health surveyed, so it may be more suited for clinicians in the earlier stages of their careers. Advantis’ commitment to client support (the company’s care team has tripled in the last 18 months) means that healthcare professionals won’t have to navigate medical facility onboarding, housing, or transportation on their own—a perk less experienced travel nurses should find especially helpful. 

Final Verdict

Advantis Medical Staffing is definitely worth a look for the wide array of nursing and allied health opportunities it provides all over the U.S. While Advantis isn’t the largest travel nursing agency out there, there are thousands of positions available through the company. Listings are updated daily, and the breadth and specificity of the search parameters make it easy to find suitable assignments. The company’s emphasis on personalized and prompt customer service wins raves from Advantis nurses. As Lappin puts it, “I’m really grateful to be a part of an agency that puts their nurses first.” 

However, the average pay is lower than that at other medical staffing agencies, and there are comparatively few opportunities at clinics, hospices, and long-term care and skilled nursing facilities.  

Methodology

This evaluation is based on data collection performed by Verywell, an independent nurse’s review of Advantis’s website and onboarding process, and interviews with staff and nurses who’ve worked with the company. We also referred to publicly available information, including reviews from third-party websites.  

We assessed the website’s usability, the responsiveness of its staff, the extent of Advantis’s geographic coverage, volume of assignments available, and ease of identifying appropriate positions. We took into account the promptness and thoroughness of responses from the staff member interviewed, as well as the enthusiasm for Advantis and its staff demonstrated by the clinicians to whom we spoke.