Sara breaks down the bill rate process. We want to clear up the bill rate confusion and explain how all the money is distributed. We fight for the best payment for our nurses.
How travel nurses are paid is rarely talked about, and there are a lot of misconceptions out there. I’m going to walk you through how it all works. Say a facility needs a travel nurse. They determine how much they will pay for the nurse they need. Once this rate is determined by the facility, they send the job to their vendor management system or VMS.
Think of the vendor management system as the middleman between agencies and facilities. Once the vendor management system receives the job, they send it out to the agencies. The agency can then submit its clinicians to the position. The pie chart in the video above represents how much the facility allows the agency to build per week for the nurses working hours.
Let’s start here with the agency’s expenses. We have the cost of any benefits we offer the nurse health insurance 401k travel reimbursement, CEU reimbursement, Any onboarding costs such as a background check and drug screen, and any bonuses we offer. Also going into that percentage is the company’s profit, which includes your recruiter’s pay and the costs of running a company.
Sometimes there are additional expenses and fees associated with contracts, so we must factor those into. Next, we have the vendor management systems percentage. They take a small piece of the total for their expenses. Once the agency has calculated all their costs and removed the VMs’ percentage, the remaining goes to the nurse. We break it down into hourly pay and the nontaxable stipend.
The stipend is determined by the GSA website and can vary by location and time of year. You were traveling. The rate is determined by the month your contract starts. If you are traveling to a low-cost area, your stipend will be lower than if you’re traveling to a high-cost area. These areas are determined and defined by the government.
Your hourly pay rate may be lower or higher depending on the amount of your stipend. There are a lot of factors that go into travel nurse pay, but as you can see, the nurse’s hourly rate and the stipend make up the largest percentage of the total pay. And our goal is to maximize the pay we can give our travelers.
Remember, percentages vary per agency and per contract, and that is how travel nurse pay works. If you have any additional questions please reach out to us today!
