Aequor Healthcare Services Announces Acquisition of Locum Connections, LLC

Aequor Healthcare Services, a Certified Joint Commission, healthcare staffing and solutions company, today announced the acquisition of Locum Connections, LLC, to lead its growth in the Physician and NP/APP locum tenens space. Locum Connections, with its multi-specialty focus, supports dozens of hospitals and specialty clinics nationwide with a deep bench of physicians and NP/APPs. This continues to strengthen Aequor Health Services’ position as the emerging leader in the healthcare staffing and solutions market throughout the United States.

“We are so happy to welcome the Locum Connections team to the Aequor Healthcare Services family,” said Manmeet Virdi, Co-CEO of Aequor Healthcare Services. “Sara Gunter and her team have created a high-touch locum tenens staffing platform that has a differentiated service offering and a long history of satisfied clients and physicians. We are looking forward to further expansion of the Locum Connections business.”

“Aequor Healthcare Services is a powerful Healthcare Staffing platform,” said Sara Gunter, Director of Locum Connections, LLC. “By joining with Aequor, Locum Connections can continue not only its growth in hospitalist staffing but further penetrate into other physician specialties, which are becoming harder to harder to staff. In addition, NP/APP demand is growing in the midst of the ever-increasing physician shortage.”

“We are confident that the combination of our two companies is a strong, strategic fit that will better position us to deliver expanded service offerings to our clients and healthcare professionals,” said Kamalpreet Virdi, Co-CEO of Aequor Healthcare Services.

Locum Connections will continue to operate out of its Atlanta, GA-based office.

About Aequor Healthcare Services, LLC

Aequor Healthcare Services (https://www.aequorhc.com) is a healthcare personnel provider that specializes in staffing physicians, therapists, nurses, technologist and allied healthcare. Aequor Healthcare Services was launched in 2001 to cater to the growing needs of the healthcare industry. With our highly effective hiring and placement procedure, Aequor Healthcare Services is now considered to be one of the fastest growing staffing companies in the industry.

About Locum Connections, LLC

Locum Connections, LLC (https://www.locumconnections.com/) is a multi-specialty physician and NP/APP locum tenens company based in Atlanta, GA. Over the last decade, Locum Connections has developed a highly differentiated service offering, providing higher quality physician NP/APP candidates, delivering superior client and provider satisfaction.

About Therapy Staff, LLC

Aequor allied company, Therapy Staff (http://www.therapystaff.com), provides short-term, long-term, and temporary to permanent placements of qualified, licensed therapists (including Physical Therapists, Occupational Therapists, Speech-Language Pathologists and Assistants) in schools, hospitals, nursing homes, contract management companies, outpatient clinics and other facilities throughout the country.

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Therapy Staff, LLC Named as Best Staffing Company 2019 - Award Recognizes Outstanding Employers in the Staffing Industry

Austin, Texas: Thursday, February 28, 2019 – TherapyStaff, LLC today announced it has been named as a Best Staffing Company to Work For winner for 2019. The award is given annually by Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA), the global advisor on staffing and workforce solutions, and recognizes employers for their top performance in engaging and retaining talent. The winners were recognized at SIA’s 28th annual Executive Forum North America, held February 25^th – 28^th at the JW Marriott in Austin, TX.

The winners represent companies who scored in the top quartile in each of the award categories. The categories comprise North American firms with 10 to 20 internal employees, firms with 21 to 50 internal employees, firms with 51 to 200 employees, firms with 201-500 employees, and firms with over 501 employees; smaller and larger UK firms; and Best Staffing Company to Temp/Contract for. The Best Staffing Firms to Work For awards are sponsored by Monster Worldwide, Inc. (NYSE: MWW).

“We work hard on culture. It’s a full-time job.” – WilliamKlabo, RVP

“Congratulations to the winners of this year’s Best Staffing Firm to Work For Awards,” said Barry Asin, President of SIA. “These high-performing companies stand out for their quality of leadership and as organizations that prioritize culture and employee engagement. There is a strong correlation between employee engagement and growth. These firms have made that connection and use it to excel in their business and drive outstanding results.”

Approximately 400 firms sought participation in the program this year, which was conducted by SIA in conjunction with Quantum Workplace, an Omaha, NE-based company. Internal employees at each firm were asked to complete a 40-question online survey that measured 10 key engagement categories focusing on items including teamwork, trust in senior leaders, feeling valued, manager effectiveness, compensation and benefits. There is no charge for participation and companies completing the survey receive a report highlighting their firm’s results.

In order to gather statistically sound results, participating companies must have reached a minimum level of employee participation, based on their total number of employees. Companies were ranked in each size category according to their overall score. Winners were chosen based entirely on the survey results.

Therapy Staff, LLC is a member of the Aequor family of companies. We recruit and place therapy professionals across the U.S.

About SIA

SIA is the Global Advisor on Staffing and Workforce Solutions
Elevating the Workforce Solutions Ecosystem

Founded in 1989, SIA is the global advisor on staffing and workforce solutions. Our proprietary research covers all categories of employed and non-employed work including temporary staffing, independent contracting and other types of contingent labor. SIA’s independent and objective analysis provides insights into the services and suppliers operating in the workforce solutions ecosystem including staffing firms, managed service providers, recruitment process outsourcers, payrolling/compliance firms and talent acquisition technology specialists such as vendor management systems, online staffing platforms, crowdsourcing and online work services. We also provide training and accreditation with our unique Certified Contingent Workforce Professional (CCWP) program.

Known for our award-winning content, data, support tools, publications, executive conferences and events, we help both suppliers and buyers of workforce solutions make better-informed decisions that improve business results and minimize risk. As a division of the international business media company, Crain Communications Inc., SIA is headquartered in Mountain View, California, with offices in London, England.

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Aequor Healthcare Services, LLC Announces Acquisition of TheraStaff, LLC effective September 12, 2016.

The company will be part of the wholly owned Allied company Therapy Staff, LLC.- This acquisition will enable Therapy Staff, LLC to increase its penetration in the therapist recruitment and staffing industry in new and expanding national markets. Together, the two companies will build a formidable alliance to help satisfy the healthcare needs of millions of Americans.

“Today we are excited and honored that our subsidiary, TheraStaff, LLC, has entered into this exclusive acquisition agreement with Therapy Staff, LLC.  As a result of this acquisition, both parties will continue to fortify their positions as significant players in the healthcare recruitment and staffing market,” stated, Brandon Stanford, CFO of Eastridge Workforce Solutions, the parent company of TheraStaff, LLC.

Headquartered in San Diego and founded in 1994, TheraStaff, LLC provides professional therapy staffing support to facilities throughout California, Colorado and Indiana. It provides a variety of medical settings with experienced, screened, and effective physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists and their respective therapy assistants.

Therapy Staff, LLC is a nationwide therapist recruiting and staffing company that has served the health care industry since 2000. It places qualified Physical Therapists, Occupational Therapists and Speech-Language Pathologists, as well as therapy assistants, within all types of health care settings throughout the nation. In addition to its corporate headquarters in Plymouth, MI, Therapy Staff, LLC has a divisional office in Austin, TX.

Aequor HealthcareServices is the parent company of Therapy Staff, LLC.  Aequor Healthcare Services is certified by the Joint Commission and is a healthcare personnel provider with over sixteen years of experience and part of the Aequor Group of Companies. It specializes in healthcare and clinical staffing, providing physicians, therapists, nurses, technologists and allied healthcare professionals to Hospital Systems, Nursing Homes/Home Care Providers, Clinics, School Systems, Laboratories, Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences organizations nationwide. Launched in 2001 to cater to the growing needs of the healthcare industry, it is now considered to be one of the fastest growing workforce solutions companies in the industry.

“The acquisition of Therastaff will give a strategic edge to our existing Therapy Staff Company and better position us to deliver expanded service offerings in new markets to our clients and healthcare professionals,” said Aequor Group’s Co-CEO & Chairman, Manmeet Virdi. “Both companies have similar culture and values that will provide growth opportunities for our team members. We look forward to serving our customers together.”

“This acquisition represents a significant milestone for both companies”, said Aequor Groups’s Co-CEO & Chairman, Kamalpreet S. Virdi. “The agreement gives both firms the ability to generate significant and sustainable benefits for their existing and prospective markets and clients for years to come.”

“TheraStaff, LLC has a record of success as one of the leading healthcare recruiting and contract agencies– and with the added support and expertise of Therapy Staff, LLC, both firms will to continue to grow and prosper” said Aequor Healthcare Services Executive Vice President, Joel Williams.

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Best Practices For BI/DW Project Planning

BI Application & Data Warehouse Project Planning should be done perfectly from all aspects: technically, resource-wise and from a business perspective. It is key to a project’s successful execution and completion.

So here is what you should do.

1. For Data Sourcing

Ensure you have all the data that is needed to compile measurements and to answer the driving business questions. For that matter, focus on these 4 things:

i. Identify data sources in the early planning stages so that all the data you might need, is readily available.

ii. Develop an understanding of how you will integrate the different data sources from, let’s say, multiple internal systems and external repositories.

iii. Ensure timeliness and consider all the cost-related constraints. You should consider how frequently you can collect data from the aforementioned sources. Also, consider the cost of refreshing your data from external data sources. In case you are using social media as a data source, more frequent updates may be required. 

iv. If cost becomes a limiting factor, as would be the case with social media data, you can consider sampling smaller data sets more frequently rather than collecting large amounts of data. Larger data sets may give you more accurate social media measures; however, well designed sampling techniques can still give useful information.

2. For BI/Data Warehouse Resources

You need a team with the capability to handle cross-organizational interactions and a deep understanding of the business issues for strengthening relationships with business users. Moreover, they should know the best ways to work with others and communicate more effectively both in writing and in business meetings and presentations. The challenges become even more pronounced as the DW/BI system evolves into a standard component of the IT environment, thus weakening the connection to the business. 

3. When Dealing With Big Data

Historically, Business Intelligence (BI) was practiced using established practices and tools, including dimensional modeling, extraction transformation and load (ETL), ad hoc reporting and dashboards. These techniques required that a data warehouse or at least a data mart is able to support management reporting that was not generally available from transaction processing systems. 

Today, we have to tap into a broader array of information captured in big data. Here are some essential characteristics to keep in mind as you develop a strategy for big data analysis.

Big data does not completely come from sales, inventory or human resources systems. It is generally a varied mixture of data sourced from application log files, machine sensor data, and social media.

1. Descriptive statistics. It is especially useful with big data sets when you partition the data and compare different groups. Most BI practitioners are familiar with this technique wherein calculations such as mean, median, and standard deviation are commonly used to describe a population. So when you get the data from Application log, you can find the average time spent in your Web application prior to the sale and not just calculate the average dollar value of a sales transaction from a sales data

2. Grouping your customers. Now normally you would do that by sales region but that is not the most informative way to organize and analyze your data. In lieu, you should think of clustering. This machine learning technique is used to identify subsets of data with similar characteristics. For example, clustering might help you identify different groups of customers based on the time spent in your Web application and the amount of their sales transaction.

3. Last you can explore big data sets and testing hypotheses to complement the types of analysis you do with your traditional BI systems.

Once you have identified a group of customers, you can also analyze their navigation patterns on the site.  Since they spend a significant amount of time on your site, you can reasonably hypothesize whether they are interested in making a purchase or not. 

4. Dealing with Big Data Types

• For large volumes, deploy enough commodity servers and storage along with a distributed file system, like the Hadoop File System (HDFS), and you can collect petabytes of data. 

• If you do not need to store the data for too long, you can take advantage of public clouds like Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure and Rackspace, but watch out for long term storage costs.

• If you have rapidly changing data consider using a real time big data analytics tool like Storm. 

Traditional BI is not dead yet and will not be anytime soon. It is here to stay as long as the business fundamentals are the same.  So the management reporting based on data from transaction processing systems will remain useful. However, big data shall introduce new ways of understanding business operations that complement existing management reporting systems.

 

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Demand for SaaS To Surge in 2016: Critical Things Businesses Should Know Before Adopting SaaS Apps

Enterprises, the customer-driven ones, are moving beyond cost reduction. In their pursuit of redefining their businesses along customer-centric dimensions, they are adopting technologies that help them deliver greater time-to-market, accuracy, and scalability advantages. SaaS and cloud computing is enabling them to do that and that acts a catalyst of competitive strength for the companies who adopt them. Furthermore, vendors/providers, in trying to retain market share in this highly competitive environment, are not raising prices. 
                            
                                      

·      As per Gartner Inc. reports - global IT spending shrank 5.5% to $3.5 trillion but CIOs and business houses continued to embrace software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings.

·     Software-as-a-Service market is projected to be around $32.8B in 2016 if it continues to grow at a steady CAGR of 19.5%.

·    If this growth continues for another 3 years as the predictions indicate, by 2018, 27.8% of the worldwide enterprise software market will be delivered on the SaaS platform, generating $50.8B in revenue.

Consequently, we are sure to witness, through 2016 and by the end of 2015 that over half of all CRM deployment will be cloud-based SaaS. Similarly, there will be rise in the demand for other on-demand SaaS-based business applications systems such as Human Resource Management, Business Intelligence (BI), Analytics and Data Mining, E-commerce, Database systems, ERP systems, corporate portals etc. SaaS is a service consumed over the Internet and so it works very differently from an on-premise model. So all/any organization(s) planning a transition to this service should make careful technical and design decisions for a successful migration to SaaS. 

1.     Data Access

Business should have a copy of their data or direct access to database and tables within.

2.     Data Security

Data in transit should be encrypted, preferably with an encryption known only to the business to which data belongs.

3.     Data Storage

It is recommended that vendor uses NoSQL databases that scale automatically and have in-built features like data backup, resilience, Disaster Recovery etc.

4.     Scalability

It’s an important element to focus on. So session information should be shared or encoded in the URLs and databases used should be scalable too, for e.g. MongoDB and Cassandra.

5.     Licensing

You can share licenses or explore open source software (OSS) options for software infrastructure, frameworks, components, or tools.

6.     User-experience

For good user-experience, SaaS application should be simple to administer, have self-service sign up process, managed user profiles, easy subscription and billing procedures.

Make an informed decision as you embark on your SaaS journey.

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