Providing Quality Patient Care with the Help of Highly Sought-After Medical Assistants

The Client

The client is a nationally ranked, independent, non-profit, pediatric acute care hospital and health system, including several outpatient specialty and primary care offices.

The Challenge

The client desperately needed to find qualified medical assistants (MAs) to support their facilities but faced significant challenges amidst the competitive healthcare market in Connecticut and the ever-growing demand for skilled MAs. Adding to the difficulty, the client had to navigate through complex local regulations and craft competitive compensation packages that could stand out in a highly competitive market.

The client previously attempted to find their own MAs but lacked the internal resources to effectively manage the hiring process, leading to high turnover rates. Subsequently, they tried working with a non-local vendor to find MAs but immediately faced several hurdles. The vendor’s lack of knowledge about the local market hindered their ability to identify suitable candidates.

Failure to find the right MAs threatened to disrupt operations. The absence of the MAs could lead to increased operational costs and erode patient care quality. Additionally, the costs associated with high turnover of unsuitable candidates — including onboarding and offboarding expenses — posed a significant financial burden.

The Actalent Solution

With a proven track record of working with 33 of the top 50 hospital systems nationwide to deliver high-quality staffing solutions, we were selected to help the client secure the highly sought-after resources they needed. Our exclusive access to top talent and deep understanding of local market conditions positioned us as the ideal partner.

We began by conducting a thorough analysis of the local market and identifying the specific qualifications required for MAs in the client’s facilities. In addition to finding qualified MAs that met their requirements, our primary goals were to improve the retention rate of MA and reduce overall hiring costs. Our team provided full-service onboarding, compliance and training support, to streamline the hiring process to ensure efficiency and effectiveness.

Our objective was to achieve the right placement the first time — minimizing turnover, reducing associated costs and enabling the client to maintain high standards of patient care. By leveraging our extensive network and local-market expertise to source and vet candidates who met the client’s requirements, we successfully placed two DP MAs.

Our solution not only met the client’s immediate staffing needs but also reinforced their confidence in our ability to deliver exceptional talent under demanding conditions.

Ultimately, the client negotiated with their exclusive vendor for contract talent (the non-local vendor) to remove medical assistants out of their contract, making Actalent the exclusive vendor for medical assistants on contract with the client going forward.

The Results

Working with Actalent, the client was able to achieve an 87% retention rate for MAs placed since January 2024.

We also improved time-to-hire, enhanced onboarding processes and significantly reduced costs associated with hiring. These enhancements can be attributed to our tailored approach and leveraging our deep understanding of the local market to find the quality MAs that met the client’s needs.

Through our partnership, the client ultimately was able to improve operational efficiency, reduce turnover–related costs and secure the MA resources they needed to provide quality patient care — helping to strengthen their reputation as a leading healthcare provider in their state.