The VMS enterprise vendors won't sell to a 60-bed SNF
Vendor control, credential compliance, and audit readiness — without a six-figure contract or a long procurement cycle. Health Shift Hero is a self-serve vendor management system (VMS) built for the long tail of healthcare: independently owned skilled nursing facilities (SNFs), assisted living, dialysis clinics, surgery centers, and private-duty operators.
ShiftKey, Nursa, and Clipboard help you fill shifts. Health Shift Hero helps you control the entire workforce pipeline — agencies, credentials, compliance, direct hires, onboarding, invoices, and audit readiness — in one system.
One system instead of a stitch-up
Long-tail facilities are too small for enterprise VMS or managed service provider (MSP) contracts, but they still juggle multiple staffing agencies, credential compliance, and audit risk. That usually means a pile of disconnected tools — and the gaps between them are where the risk lives.
Agency spreadsheets
Each agency sends its own tracker, its own format, its own bill rate. Nobody has one view of who is working, for whom, and at what price.
Credential binders
Licenses, certifications, and background checks live in binders and inboxes. Nobody notices an expired credential until it is a survey finding.
Invoice surprises
Bill rates drift, hours don't reconcile, and there is no clean audit of what an agency charged versus what was worked and approved.
Survey scramble
When a surveyor asks for documentation, the whole team stops to reassemble records that should have been ready all along.
Health Shift Hero is a neutral technology platform between facilities and agencies — not a staffing agency. It is worker-type agnostic: agency-supplied, W2 direct hire, or 1099. The facility chooses.
How VMS Core works
VMS Core is the free foundation — the agency gateway, credential compliance, invoice workflow, monthly sanctions monitoring, and audit trail that every facility needs from day one.
Agency Gateway
Route every staffing agency through one portal with a facility portal and worker profile portal on the other side. One place to see every vendor, worker, and shift.
Credential Compliance
Central credential file management with facility-specific requirement rules. The compliance check is a hard gate, not a report: a worker with a lapsed required credential cannot be confirmed onto a shift — the platform refuses it, and the coordinator is warned before they even submit.
Invoice & Payment Workflow
Statements, invoice audit, and approval in one workflow, so what an agency bills reconciles against hours worked and approved. Workflow and records only — Health Shift Hero does not move money.
OIG / Sanctions Screening
Every credentialed worker is re-screened each month against the published Office of Inspector General (OIG) / List of Excluded Individuals/Entities (LEIE) file and Louisiana's adverse-actions list. A confirmed exclusion blocks placement automatically. Anything less than confirmed goes to a person: the published files carry no Social Security Number, so a name match is never proof of identity, and we will not take one of your workers off the floor on a guess. Possible matches land in a review queue with the published record beside the worker's own file, so your team decides in a minute — and the decision, with its reason and who made it, is recorded permanently.
Audit Trail
A full, exportable audit trail plus agency compliance packets — so survey documentation is ready before anyone asks for it.
How VMS Core is funded: the facility pays $0. Participating agencies pay 2% of gross billings. Economic incidence is the same either way; we invoice the side that lowers the barrier to adoption. The fee is disclosed openly, never buried in a bill rate.
The reports that decide your rating
Accreditation is optional for most freestanding skilled nursing facilities. Payroll-Based Journal (PBJ) reporting and the federal staffing minimum are not — they feed your Five-Star rating and your enforcement exposure. Agency staff are usually how a facility closes a staffing gap on short notice, so the system that tracks agency labor should be the system that reports it.
Staffing minimum dashboard
Hours per resident day (HPRD) against the federal minimum of 3.48 total nurse HPRD, computed from worked and approved hours rather than from the schedule — with a projection for the days ahead, while you can still act on them.
One-click PBJ export
Contract-staffing hours as CMS Payroll-Based Journal XML, built from the same approved timecards your invoices were audited against.
Survey binder export
Credentials, verifications, competencies, and the approval trail behind each shift — one document set, on demand, covering the period a surveyor actually asks about.
Your agencies join by invitation, not signup
Adoption stalls on the vendors, not the software. So you invite the agencies you already work with from your own vendor list, and they land in an account that already holds the relationship — the invoices you filed against them, and a contract proposal from your side, waiting. An agency can do the same for its client facilities, whose VMS Core is free.
There is no open signup: an account exists only behind an invite from someone you already do business with.
Add modules as complexity grows
Start with the free core, then layer on facility-paid modules when you are ready. Manage your own employee files, build a local talent network, reduce intake admin, or run the whole stack.
Compliance Audit
$300/mo — manage your own employee credential files, historical records, expiration tracking, and an audit-ready document vault.
Network
$900/mo + 2% placement fee — turn your facility into its own local talent network with a job-posting page, QR application links, shift bidding, and an internal float pool.
AI Intake & Onboarding
+$300/mo — resume parsing, skills extraction, credential matching, and onboarding packet prep. It flags missing fields and routes packets for proper human completion and signature; it does not complete or file I-9s or tax forms for you. (On the roadmap — see what is live today.)
Premier Workforce Hub
$1,500/mo — bundles VMS Core, Audit, Network, and AI Intake with advanced reporting, vendor scorecards, rate analytics, and priority support.
Choose your path
For facilities
VMS Core is free to your facility — agency gateway, credential compliance, invoice workflow, monthly sanctions monitoring, and audit trail, funded by participating agencies. Add modules only when you need them.
For agencies
Join the network and reach facilities that want fewer vendors and cleaner workflow. Pricing is transparent: 2% of gross billings, disclosed in the open — no hidden markups, no per-seat surprises.
Health Shift Hero holds credential and billing data, not patient records. Network placement fees: W2 direct hires are charged 2% of gross wages, capped at the first 460 worked hours per hire; per-diem and 1099 shifts are charged 2% of the shift price per shift, with no cap. Contact: [email protected].