Squeezed by temp nurse costs, hospital systems create their own staffing agencies

(STONE / GETTY IMAGES)

Like many nurses these days, Alex Scala got a big pay hike when she switched jobs recently.

Scala also received a welcome mix of assignments when she joined Pittsburgh-based Allegheny Health Network. She signed on with a newly created team that works shifts in various units within the system’s 14 hospitals.

After working as a registered nurse on staff at a facility elsewhere, Scala, 31, now commutes from her home in Butler, Pennsylvania, to the system’s hospitals across western Pennsylvania. “I can meet new people, learn new procedures, how hospitals do different things,” Scala said.