Trusted Health alternatives for hospitals that want to hire directly

Trusted Health is a staffing marketplace built for the clinician, not the employer. Its site calls itself the "#1 Jobs App for Clinicians", invites nurses and allied professionals to "Get matched to flexible jobs" (travel, contract and local), and says it "replaced the old-school staffing agency with a simple app". The clinician is Trusted's employee: the app lists "Day 1 Medical, Dental, & Vision Insurance", a "401(k) with Qualified Employer Matching", paid time off and a "Dedicated Advocate & 24/7 Support", and its agents "work 24/7" to auto-submit a clinician to matching contracts. The company reports "Over 1 Million Clinicians" and, as of 10 October 2026, 10,043 open positions at an average of $2,382 a week. Its About page describes the marketplace as "matching nursing & allied professionals to contract jobs across all 50 states".

The "For Employers" link does not lead to a hiring product. It goes to Trusted Works, "intelligent staffing and scheduling for hospitals & health systems": demand forecasting, schedule auto-balancing, open-shift automation, dynamic incentives, agency optimization and a VMS, in five stages the site labels Forecast, Schedule, Extend, Fill and Learn. The Fill stage will "recruit for open shifts, match eligible clinicians, automate outreach and booking", but the clinicians it fills with are your own core staff, flex pool, part-timers and, as a "last resort", agency contracts. Published results are workforce results: Mercy reports "$100M+ labor cost savings", Deaconess Health System a "32% reduction in premium spend" with fill rate "up from 85% to 93%", and Southern Illinois Healthcare more than $500,000 in incentive savings a year. Works integrates with UKG, ShiftWizard and symplr and is SOC 2 Type 1, ISO 27001 and Joint Commission accredited. Pricing is not published for either product.

So a hospital that wants to stop renting travelers and hire nurses onto its own payroll is looking for a different kind of tool. Direct hiring comes in two shapes: inbound, a marketplace where clinicians who are already searching apply to you; and outbound, where someone finds and contacts the clinicians who are not searching at all. The five alternatives below cover both, plus the case where you still need some travel coverage while you hire. Every fact comes from the vendor's own site on the date shown.

The alternatives at a glance

1. Betterleap: outbound sourcing for the nurses who are not applying

A staffing marketplace only shows you clinicians who chose contract work and signed up. The nurses a hospital most wants to hire permanently are usually employed, not searching, and on no app. Betterleap reaches them. A recruiter describes the role in plain language; the agent searches 35M+ healthcare professionals, checks licensure through 25+ state board partnerships, writes a personalized multi-step email sequence, sends it from the recruiter's own mailbox and follows up until candidates reply. It also re-engages the past applicants and silver medalists already sitting in your ATS (25+ integrations) after refreshing their contact data. References: Beebe Healthcare (91% contact match rate, 77% candidate response rate via chat), Community Health Network (35% increase in sourcing efficiency, about ten hours a week saved per recruiter) and FOX Rehabilitation (five or more new markets entered with no prior pipeline). Betterleap is for permanent hiring onto your own payroll; it does not staff travel or per diem assignments and it does not schedule shifts.

2. Incredible Health: the permanent-only marketplace

The closest inbound answer to "hire directly instead of renting travelers". Incredible Health describes itself as "the largest software and AI-enabled career marketplace for permanent healthcare workers", "100% specialized for healthcare only", connecting "1,500+ US healthcare employers and 1.5M US healthcare professionals" with a "2 week go-live" and Workday Innovation Partner status. Its AI voice agent Lyn "interviews and sells to candidates across every job category, 24/7, with a 96% candidate satisfaction score". The customer result most relevant to a Trusted Health buyer is Montefiore Health System: "by converting agency reliance into permanent placements", it "reduced premium labor spend by $3.8M and sourced 33% of all nurse hires through Incredible Health". Johns Hopkins Health System went "from 95 days to 21 days for permanent specialty hires" and Providence Health "doubled permanent placements across 51 hospitals". It covers permanent roles only, no travel or per diem. See also Incredible Health alternatives.

3. Vivian Health: one inbound marketplace across every employment type

If you want to post your own permanent roles and still cover contract and per diem gaps from the same place, Vivian is the inbound marketplace that serves "Direct Healthcare Employers" as well as agencies. It describes "over 2.8 million highly engaged healthcare professionals across nursing, Allied, Therapy, APP", "1.8M+ clinicians within the Vivian talent pool", candidates "pre-screened based on Role Type, Availability & Licensure", the ability to "chat directly with engaged candidates", a "Healthcare Specific Universal Profile" with work experience, licenses and certifications that can be pushed to your ATS, and an AI Assistant that "engages candidates 24/7, screens them against role requirements, preps them for submission, and then hands them off to recruiters". Employers can "hire travel, local contract, and per diem clinicians through Vivian" too, on your own terms rather than through Trusted's payroll. See also Vivian Health alternatives.

4. Aya Healthcare: the Works-style software bundle with a permanent hiring product

Aya is the alternative for a health system that likes what Trusted Works does and also wants a permanent hiring product from the same vendor. It positions itself as "healthcare's largest talent marketplace" and sells workforce software next to staffing: LotusOne, "the most features of any VMS"; Workforce AI, which "uses predictive analytics, AI and machine learning to forecast patient demand and workforce needs months in advance"; the Shifts app for "app-based open shift management" from "your employed or local pool"; and CoreHire, a "complete permanent hiring solution" with "unlimited job postings, advanced digital marketing and a centralized platform to manage applications". Staffing services span travel, local contract, per diem, permanent, locums, interim leadership and managed service provider programs. CoreHire is a posting and applicant-management tool, not outbound sourcing, so pair it with a sourcing tool for the roles nobody applies to.

5. Nomad Health: like-for-like travel coverage while you hire

Direct hiring takes months, and most hospitals keep some travel coverage in the meantime. Nomad Health is the closest like-for-like replacement for Trusted's marketplace: facilities "post open positions" on its job marketplace, "review submissions" in one dashboard and "extend offers" and extensions "with a single click", with an "automatic matching feature" and each applicant's "experience, licensure, and credentials all in one place". Nomad reports "300K+ Registered Nomad clinicians", "50 States served" and "95% On time starts", and holds The Joint Commission's Gold Seal of Approval for Travel Nursing Accreditation. Like Trusted, Nomad employs the traveler, so it is a bridge, not a direct-hire tool.

How to choose

• You want to hire permanent nurses who are not on any app: outbound sourcing with licensure verification, Betterleap.
• You want pre-vetted permanent candidates to apply to you, with AI-run first interviews: Incredible Health.
• You want to post permanent, contract and per diem roles on one marketplace and engage candidates yourself: Vivian Health.
• You want scheduling, open-shift and VMS software with a permanent hiring product attached: Aya Healthcare.
• You still need travelers this quarter and want the vendor to employ and credential them: Nomad Health, or Trusted Health itself.
• You want to forecast demand and fill open shifts from your own staff before calling an agency: Trusted Works remains the fit, alongside any of the above.

Betterleap works alongside any of these: the marketplaces bring the candidates who are already looking, Betterleap finds the ones who are not, and a scheduling platform decides which shifts still need a hire at all. To see outbound healthcare sourcing on your own requisitions, request a demo. For a broader tool-by-tool survey, see the best healthcare recruiting tools.

Sources

• Trusted Health, trustedhealth.com and trustedhealth.com/about, read 11 October 2026.
• Trusted Works, works.ai, read 11 October 2026.
• Incredible Health, incrediblehealth.com, read 11 October 2026.
• Vivian Health, hire.vivian.com and hire.vivian.com/facilities, read 11 October 2026.
• Aya Healthcare, ayahealthcare.com/healthcare-staffing-services and ayahealthcare.com/healthcare-software-solutions, read 11 October 2026.
• Nomad Health, nomadhealth.com/facilities, read 11 October 2026.
• Betterleap, betterleap.com and the linked case studies.