UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
Washington, D.C. 20549
FORM 10-K
Annual Report Pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934
For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2003
Commission File No.: 001-16753
AMN HEALTHCARE SERVICES, INC.
(Exact Name of Registrant as Specified in Its Charter)
| Delaware | 06-1500476 | |
| (State or Other Jurisdiction of Incorporation or Organization) |
(I.R.S. Employer Identification No.) | |
| 12400 High Bluff Drive, Suite 100 San Diego, California |
92130 | |
| (Address of principal executive offices) |
(Zip Code) | |
Registrants Telephone Number, Including Area Code: (866) 871-8519
Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act: Common Stock, $0.01 par value
Name of each exchange on which registered: New York Stock Exchange
Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Act:
None.
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant: (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days. Yes þ No ¨
Indicate by check mark if disclosure of delinquent filers pursuant to Item 405 of Regulation S-K is not contained herein, and will not be contained, to the best of registrants knowledge, in definitive proxy or information statements incorporated by reference in Part III of this Form 10-K or any amendment to this Form 10-K. þ
Indicate by a check mark whether the registrant is an accelerated filer (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934). Yes þ No ¨
As of June 30, 2003, the approximate aggregate market value of voting stock held by non-affiliates of the registrant was $253,456,237 based on a closing sale price of $12.70 per share. As of March 9, 2004, there were 28,120,340 shares of common stock, $0.01 par value, outstanding.
Documents Incorporated By Reference: Portions of the registrants definitive Proxy Statement for the annual meeting of shareholders to be held on May 18, 2004 have been incorporated by reference into part III of this Form 10-K.
i
PART I
Our Company
AMN Healthcare Services, Inc. is a leading temporary healthcare staffing company and the largest nationwide provider of travel nurse staffing services. We recruit nurses and allied health professionals, nationally and internationally, our temporary healthcare professionals, and place them on temporary assignments of variable lengths at acute care hospitals and healthcare facilities throughout the United States. Approximately 94% of our temporary healthcare professionals are nurses, while the remainder are technicians, therapists and technologists. We are actively working with a pre-screened pool of prospective temporary healthcare professionals, of whom an average of over 6,300 were on assignment during the fourth quarter of 2003.
Our services are marketed to two distinct customer bases: (1) temporary healthcare professionals and (2) hospital and healthcare facility clients. We use a multi-brand recruiting strategy to enhance our ability to successfully attract temporary healthcare professionals in the United States and internationally. Our seven separate recruitment brands, American Mobile Healthcare, Medical Express, NursesRx, Preferred Healthcare Staffing, HRMC, Thera Tech Staffing and OGrady-Peyton International, have distinct geographic market strengths and brand reputations. Nurses and allied healthcare professionals join us for a variety of reasons that include: seeking flexible work opportunities, traveling to different areas of the country, building their clinical skills and resume by working at prestigious healthcare facilities, and escaping the demands and political environment of working as a permanent staff nurse. Our large number of hospital and healthcare facility clients allows us to offer traveling positions in all 50 states and in a variety of work environments. In addition, we provide our temporary healthcare professionals with an attractive benefits package, including free or subsidized housing, travel reimbursement, professional development opportunities, a 401(k) plan and health insurance. We believe that we attract temporary healthcare professionals due to our long-standing reputation for providing a high level of service, our numerous job opportunities, our benefit packages, our innovative marketing programs and, our most effective recruiting tool, word-of-mouth referrals from our thousands of current and former temporary healthcare professionals.
We market our services to hospitals and healthcare facilities under one brand, AMN Healthcare, as a single staffing provider with access to temporary healthcare professionals from seven recruitment brands. At the end of 2003, we had over 4,300 hospital and healthcare facility clients. Over 97% of our temporary healthcare professional assignments are at acute-care hospitals. Our clients include hospitals and healthcare systems such as Georgetown University Hospital, HCA, NYU Medical Center, Stanford Health Care, UCLA Medical Center and The University of Chicago Hospitals. We also provide services to sub-acute healthcare facilities, dialysis centers, clinics and schools. Our hospital and healthcare facility clients utilize our services to cost-effectively manage shortages in their staff due to a variety of circumstances, such as the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), new unit openings, seasonal patient census variations and other short and long-term staffing needs. In addition to providing continuity of care and quality patient care, we believe hospitals and healthcare facilities contract with us due to our high-quality temporary healthcare professionals, our ability to meet their specific staffing needs, our flexible staffing assignment lengths, our reliable and deep infrastructure, our superior customer service and our ability to offer a large national network of temporary healthcare professionals.
We believe that we have organized our operating model to deliver consistent, high-quality sales and service efforts to our two distinct client bases. Processes within our operating model have been developed and are in place with the intent to maximize the quantity and quality of assignment requests, or orders, from our hospital and healthcare facility clients and increase the expediency and probability of successfully placing our temporary healthcare professionals. The consistent quality of the benefit and support services which we provide to our temporary healthcare professionals is also critical to our success, since the majority of our temporary healthcare professionals stay with us for multiple assignments and we believe our largest source of new candidates is word-of-mouth referrals from satisfied current and former temporary healthcare professionals.
1
Industry Overview
In 2003, total healthcare expenditures in the United States were estimated at $1.7 trillion, representing approximately 15% of the U.S. gross domestic product, and had grown approximately 8% over 2002 according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Over the next decade, an aging U.S. population and advances in medical technology are expected to drive increases in hospital patient populations and the consumption of healthcare services. As a result, total healthcare expenditures are projected to increase to approximately $3.3 trillion during the next decade.
Within the healthcare staffing sector, temporary staffing has emerged over the last several years as a business practice to efficiently deliver healthcare services. In the mid-1990s, several factors prompted the increased usage of temporary staffing at hospitals. A principal factor was cost containment. Managed care, Medicare, Medicaid and competitive pressures created renewed emphasis on cost containment. Among other industry responses, this led acute-care hospitals to redesign their staffing models to reduce their levels of fixed staffing and to include a variable staffing component.
The temporary healthcare staffing industry accounted for approximately $10.4 billion in revenue in 2003 according to estimates by The Staffing Industry Report. Approximately 70% of the temporary healthcare staffing industry is comprised of nurse staffing and approximately 30% is comprised of allied health, physicians and other healthcare professionals. Temporary healthcare staffing has experienced strong historical growth from 1998 through estimated 2003, growing at a compound annual rate of 16.5%.
Demand and Supply Drivers
Since the mid-1990s, changes in the healthcare industry prompted a fundamental shift in staffing models that led to an increased usage of temporary staffing at hospitals and other healthcare facilities. The supply of professionals choosing travel healthcare as a short-term or long-term career option has also grown alongside increased demand for temporary healthcare professionals. We believe that this expanded demand and supply pattern will continue over the long-term, particularly in the travel nurse staffing sector, because of the following drivers:
Demand Drivers
| | Demographics and Advances in Medicine and Technology. As the U.S. population ages and as advances in medicine result in longer life expectancy, it is likely that chronic illnesses and hospital populations will continue to increase. We believe that these factors will increase the demand for both temporary and permanent nurses, as well as for allied health professionals. In addition, advances in healthcare technology have increased the demand for specialty nurses who are qualified to operate advanced medical equipment or perform complex medical procedures. |
| | Shift to Flexible Staffing Models. Nurse wages comprise the largest percentage of hospitals labor expenses. Cost containment initiatives and a renewed focus on cost-effective healthcare service delivery continue to lead many hospitals and other healthcare facilities to adopt flexible staffing models that include utilization of flexible staffing sources, such as traveling nurses. |
| | Nursing Shortage. Most regions of the United States are experiencing a pronounced shortage of registered nurses. In 2002, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services projected that up to 136,000 position vacancies would exist in 2003 for registered nurses, representing a shortage of approximately 7%. The U. S. Department of Health and Human Services has also reported that the registered nurse workforce is expected to be 29% below projected requirements by 2020. Faced with increasing demand for and a shrinking supply of nurses, hospitals are utilizing more temporary nurses to meet staffing requirements. Factors contributing to the current and projected declining supply of nurses include: |
| | Nurses Leaving Patient Care Environments for Less Stressful and More Flexible Careers. Career opportunities for nurses have expanded beyond the traditional bedside role. Pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, HMOs and hospital service and supply companies increasingly offer nurses attractive positions which involve less demanding work schedules and physical requirements. |
2
| | Changes in Nurse Population. The average age of a registered nurse was estimated to be 45.2 years old in 2000, an increase of 8.4% since 1988. By 2010, 40% of the nurse population is expected to be older than 50, as compared to 29% of nurses that were older than 50 in 2000. The number of first-time nursing school graduates who sat for the NCLEX examination decreased by 28% for the six-year period ending in 2001. Although these numbers have increased 14% and 6% in 2002 and 2003, respectively, we believe that the number of nurses taking the NCLEX examination is still well below the number of nurses needed in order to eliminate the projected long-term nursing shortage. |
| | Seasonality. Hospitals in regions that experience significant seasonal fluctuations in population, such as Florida or Arizona during the winter months, must be able to efficiently adjust their staffing levels to accommodate the change in patient census. Many of these hospitals utilize temporary healthcare professionals to satisfy these seasonal staffing needs. |
| | Family and Medical Leave Act. The adoption of the Family and Medical Leave Act in 1993, which mandates 12-week job-protected maternity and dependent care leave, continues to create temporary nursing vacancies at healthcare facilities. Approximately 94% of the registered nurses working at healthcare facilities in the United States are women. |
| | State Legislation Requiring Healthcare Facilities to Utilize More Nurses. In response to concerns by nursing and consumer organizations over the quality of care provided in healthcare facilities and the increased workloads and pressures placed upon nurses, several states have passed or introduced legislation that is expected to increase the demand for nurses. |
| | Minimum Nurse-to-Patient Ratios. Effective January 2004, California hospitals are required to staff units at government mandated nurse-to-patient ratios. Similar legislation has been introduced in several other states. |
| | Limitation of Mandatory Overtime. Many healthcare facilities require their permanent staff to work overtime to cover staffing shortages. Seven states have passed legislation that limits mandatory overtime for nurses, and similar legislation has already been introduced in several other states. In addition, federal legislation has been introduced that would limit the ability of many healthcare facilities to require nurses to work mandatory overtime, except in limited circumstances. |
Supply Drivers
| | Traditional Reasons for a Healthcare Professional to Work on a Travel Assignment. Traveling allows healthcare professionals to explore new areas of the United States, work at prestigious hospitals, learn new skills, build their resumes and avoid unwanted workplace politics that may accompany a permanent position. Other benefits to temporary healthcare professionals include free or subsidized housing, professional development opportunities, competitive wages, health insurance and completion bonuses for some assignments. All of these opportunities have been constant supply drivers, attracting a growing number of new healthcare professionals into traveling. |
| | Word-of-Mouth Referrals. New applicants are most often referred to travel staffing companies by current or former temporary healthcare professionals. Growth in the number of healthcare professionals that have traveled, as well as the increased number of hospital and healthcare facilities that utilize temporary healthcare professionals, creates more opportunities for referrals. |
| | More Nurses Choosing Traveling Due to the Nursing Shortage. In times of nursing shortages, nurses with permanent jobs generally feel more secure about their employment prospects. They have a higher degree of confidence that they can leave their permanent position to take a travel assignment and have the ability to return to a permanent position in the future. Additionally, during a nursing shortage, permanent staff nurses are often required to assume greater responsibility and patient loads, work |
3
| overtime and deal with increased pressures within the hospital. Many experienced nurses consequently choose to leave their permanent employer and look for a more flexible and rewarding position. |
| | New Legislation Allowing Nurses to Become More Mobile. The Mutual Recognition Compact Legislation, promoted by the National Council of State Boards of Nursing, allows nurses to work more freely within states participating in the Compact Legislation without obtaining new state licenses. The recognition legislation began in 1999 and has been passed in 20 states as of January 2004. |
Growth Strategy
Our goal is to expand our leadership position within the temporary healthcare staffing sector in the United States. The key components of our business strategy include:
| | Expanding Our Network of Qualified Temporary Healthcare Professionals. Through our recruiting efforts both in the United States and internationally, we continue to expand our network of qualified temporary healthcare professionals. We have exhibited substantial growth in our temporary healthcare professional network over the past five years primarily through referrals from our current and former temporary healthcare professionals, as well as through advertising and internet initiatives. |
| | Strengthening and Expanding Our Relationships with Hospitals and Healthcare Facilities. We continue to strengthen and expand our existing relationships with our hospital and healthcare facility clients, and to develop new relationships. Hospitals and healthcare facilities are seeking a strong business partner for outsourcing who can fulfill the quantity and quality of their staffing needs and help them develop strategies for the most cost-effective staffing methods. In order to establish deeper and more collaborative partnerships, we have recently expanded our client services and account management team. This expansion allows us to better understand and serve the needs of our hospital and healthcare facility clients. Furthermore, because we possess one of the largest national networks of temporary nurse and allied health professionals, we are well positioned to offer our hospital and healthcare facility clients effective solutions to meet their staffing needs. |
| | Leveraging Our Business Model and Large Hospital and Healthcare Facility Client Base to Increase Productivity. We seek to increase our productivity through our proven multi-brand recruiting strategy, large network of temporary healthcare professionals, established hospital and healthcare facility client relationships, proprietary information systems, innovative marketing and recruitment programs, training programs and centralized administrative support systems. Our multi-brand recruiting strategy allows a recruiter in any of our brands to take advantage of all of our nationwide placement opportunities. In addition, our information systems and support personnel permit our recruiters to spend more time focused on temporary healthcare professionals needs and placing them on appropriate assignments in hospitals or healthcare facilities. Implementation of our business model at our acquired brands has resulted in increases in their productivity. |
| | Expanding Service Offerings Through New Staffing Solutions. In order to further enhance the growth in our business and improve our competitive position in the healthcare staffing sector, we continue to explore new service offerings. As our hospital and healthcare clients needs change, we constantly explore what additional services we can provide to better serve our clients. |
| | Providing Innovative Technology. We continue to be an innovation leader in healthcare staffing by providing on-line tools to hospital and healthcare clients, to help them streamline their communications and process flow for securing staffing services. We recently introduced our Staffing Service Center, an online resource and tool to help our clients manage outsourced staffing more efficiently. |
| | Building the Strongest Management Team to Optimize Our Business Model. In addition to a tenured senior management team who has successfully led us through a period of rapid growth and successful integration of five acquisitions, we have increased our focus on training and professional development for all levels of management. |
4
| | Capitalizing on Strategic Acquisition Opportunities. In order to enhance our competitive position, we will continue to selectively explore strategic acquisitions. After previous acquisitions, we have sought to leverage our hospital relationships and orders across our brands, integrate back-office functions and maintain brand differentiation for temporary healthcare professional recruitment purposes. We also have implemented our proven business model in order to achieve greater productivity, operating efficiencies and financial results. |
Recent Trends
From 1996 through 2000, the temporary healthcare staffing industry grew at a compound annual growth rate of approximately 13%, and this growth accelerated to a compound annual growth rate of approximately 21% from 2000 to 2002. Over the last year, the demand for temporary healthcare professionals has declined due to a number of factors. In particular, we believe hospitals have increased their nurse recruitment efforts, stretched the productivity of permanent staff and maximized the cost-effectiveness of outsourced staffing solutions. In addition, because of the recent economic conditions, we believe permanent staff at our hospital and healthcare facility clients have been more likely to work overtime and less likely to leave their positions, creating fewer vacancies and fewer opportunities for us to place our temporary healthcare professionals.
The number of temporary healthcare professionals on assignment for the year decreased 9% from an average of 7,783 in 2002 to an average of 7,113 in 2003. Additionally, during the fourth quarter of 2003, we had an average of 6,339 temporary healthcare professionals on assignment. As a result of this decline, revenue and net income decreased throughout 2003. Demand for our services stabilized from April 2003 through October 2003, and has increased since then, throughout many regions. We believe that this increase in the number of orders placed by our hospital and healthcare facility clients is a result of increased hospital admission growth and legislation impacting healthcare staffing throughout the United States, such as the California nurse staffing ratios that went into effect in January 2004. In addition, we believe signs of an improving economy and our increased focus on our hospital and healthcare facility clients have driven the recent increase in demand. We believe we will continue to experience a lag between when changes in demand occur and when our operations processes translate into changes in the number of temporary healthcare professionals on assignment and our financial results. Therefore, the changes in demand experienced in our industry could also result in continued changes in revenue and net income in subsequent quarters, and it is uncertain whether the recent increase in demand will drive increases in the average number of temporary healthcare professionals on assignment.
Business Overview
Services Provided
Hospitals and healthcare facilities generally obtain supplemental staffing from two sources, local temporary (per diem) agencies and national travel healthcare staffing companies. Per diem staffing, which has historically comprised the majority of the temporary healthcare staffing industry, involves the placement of locally-based healthcare professionals on daily (per diem) shift work, on an as needed basis. Hospitals and healthcare facilities often give only a few hours notice of their per diem assignments, and require a quick turnaround from their staffing agencies, generally less than 24 hours. Travel staffing, on the other hand, provides healthcare facilities with staffing solutions to address anticipated staffing requirements, typically for 8, 13 or 26 weeks. In contrast to per diem agencies, travel staffing companies select from a national (and in some cases international) skilled labor pool and provide pre-screened candidates to their hospital and healthcare facility clients, often at a lower cost. We focus on the travel segment of the temporary healthcare staffing industry, and provide both nurse and allied health temporary healthcare professionals to our hospital and healthcare facility clients.
Nurses. We provide medical nurses, surgical nurses, specialty nurses, licensed practical or vocational nurses and advanced practice nurses in a wide range of specialties for travel assignments throughout the United States. We place our qualified nurse professionals with premier, nationally recognized hospitals and hospital
5
systems. The majority of our assignments are in acute-care hospitals, including teaching institutions, trauma centers and community hospitals. Nurses comprise approximately 94% of the total temporary healthcare professionals currently working for us. We typically place the majority of our nurses on 13-week assignments, but offer a longer term, typically 18-month staffing solution with our international nurses that we recruit primarily from English speaking countries.
Allied Health Professionals. We also provide allied health professionals to acute-care hospitals and other healthcare facilities such as skilled nursing facilities, rehabilitation clinics and schools. Allied health professionals include such disciplines as surgical technologists, respiratory therapists, medical and radiology technologists, dialysis technicians, speech pathologists and rehabilitation assistants. Allied health professionals comprise approximately 6% of the total temporary healthcare professionals currently working for us.
Multi-Brand Recruiting
In order to enhance our opportunities to expand our network of traveling professionals, we recruit temporary healthcare professionals in the United States and internationally under each of our seven recruitment brand names: American Mobile Healthcare, Medical Express, NursesRx, Preferred Healthcare Staffing, HRMC, Thera Tech Staffing and OGrady-Peyton International. While all of our brands have the capability to place temporary healthcare professionals on assignments that we have throughout the United States using the same placement opportunities, our brands have distinct geographic market strengths and brand reputations, which enhance our recruitment opportunities.
It is common for temporary healthcare professionals to register with more than one brand in order to utilize more than one recruiter. Our multi-brand recruiting strategy provides us with a competitive advantage, as potential temporary healthcare professionals are able to work with more than one of our brand recruiters. Accordingly, we believe that our probability of successfully placing the temporary healthcare professional on assignment is enhanced.
To our hospital and healthcare facility clients, however, we market and administer our services under the single corporate brand of AMN Healthcare. Hospitals and healthcare facility clients, in turn, have the advantage of managing one contract with us, but receiving the benefit of seven nationally known brands that recruit temporary healthcare professionals for their open positions.
6
The following chart depicts our single staffing provider and multi-brand recruiting model:
| Multi-Brand Recruiting | Single Staffing Provider |
National Presence and Diversified Hospital and Healthcare Facility Client Base
We offer our temporary healthcare professionals nationwide placement opportunities and provide temporary staffing solutions to our hospital and healthcare facility clients that are located throughout the United States. We typically have open temporary healthcare professional requests, or orders, in all 50 states. The largest percentages of these open orders are typically concentrated in heavily populated states such as Arizona, California, Florida, New York and Texas.
The number of our hospital and healthcare facility clients that we serve has grown from approximately 600 in 1993 to over 3,600 and 4,300 at the end of 2002 and 2003, respectively. Over 97% of our temporary healthcare professional assignments are at acute-care hospitals. In addition to acute-care hospitals, we also provide services to sub-acute healthcare facilities, dialysis centers, clinics and schools. Our clients include hospitals and healthcare systems such as Georgetown University Hospital, HCA, NYU Medical Center, Scripps Health Systems, Stanford Health Care, Swedish Health Services, Texas Childrens Hospital, UCLA Medical Center and
7
The University of Chicago Hospitals. As of December 31, 2003, no single client, including affiliated groups, comprised more than 10% of our temporary healthcare professionals on assignment and no single client facility comprised more than 3% of our temporary healthcare professionals on assignment.
Our Business Model
We have developed and continually refined our business model to achieve greater levels of productivity and efficiency. Our model is designed to optimize the communication with, and service to, both our temporary healthcare professionals and our hospital and healthcare facility clients.
The following graph illustrates the elements of our business model:
Marketing and Recruitment of New Temporary Healthcare Professionals
We believe that nursing and allied health professionals are attracted to us because of our customer service and relationship-oriented approach, our competitive compensation and benefits package, and our large and diverse offering of work assignments that provide the opportunity to travel to numerous attractive locations throughout the United States.
We believe that our multi-brand recruiting strategy makes us more effective at reaching a larger number of temporary healthcare professionals. Because it is common for these healthcare professionals to register with more than one brand in the industry, we believe that by offering seven distinct brands we increase our ability to recruit temporary healthcare professionals. Each brand has its own distinct identity to prospective temporary healthcare professionals, allowing us to segment the nursing population. We have conducted research to identify and categorize our temporary healthcare professionals into several categories, which allows us to market to specific nurses that meet the specific needs of our hospital clients. We tailor the marketing of each of our brands through a combination of websites, journal advertising, conferences and conventions, direct mail, printed marketing material and, most importantly, through personal word-of-mouth referrals from current and former temporary healthcare professionals. We also operate NurseZone.com and RN.com, two leading nurse community websites. NurseZone.com caters to the professional and personal lives of nurses, offering nursing news and updates, links to
8
other Internet sites, discounted products and services, continuing education courses and career opportunities sponsored by our recruitment brands, including an online temporary healthcare professional application process. RN.com offers online education opportunities for nurses, other online nurse related services and an online temporary healthcare professional application process. In addition, we operate a variety of other websites, including Travelnursing.com and Nursingjobs.com. Our leading recruitment brands are featured on each website, and each website includes an easy and efficient online application process where temporary healthcare professionals can complete one application online and have it sent to each of the brands of their choice.
Screening and Quality Management
Through our quality management department, we screen all candidates prior to their placement, and we continue to evaluate our temporary healthcare professionals after they are placed to ensure adequate performance as well as to determine feasibility for future placements. Our internal processes are designed to ensure that our temporary healthcare professionals have the appropriate experience, credentials and skills for the assignments that they accept. Our experience has shown us that well-matched placements result in satisfied temporary healthcare professionals and healthcare facility clients. Our screening and quality management process includes three principal stages:
Initial screening. Each new temporary healthcare professional candidate who submits an application with us must meet certain criteria, including appropriate prior work experience and proper educational and licensing credentials. We independently verify each applicants work history and references to reasonably ensure that our hospital and healthcare facility clients may depend on our temporary healthcare professionals for clinical competency and personal reliability. Our proprietary clinical skills checklists, developed for each healthcare specialty area, are used by our hospital and healthcare facility clients hiring managers as a basis for evaluating candidates and conducting interviews, and for facilitating the selection of a temporary healthcare professional who can meet the hospital or healthcare facility clients specific needs.
Assignment specific screening. Once an assignment is accepted by a temporary healthcare professional, our quality management department tracks the necessary documentation and license verification required for the temporary healthcare professional to meet the requirements set forth by us, the hospital or healthcare facility and, when required, the applicable state board of health or nursing. Additionally, where state and federal laws apply with regard to the employment of healthcare workers, we have in place the necessary procedures to ensure compliance with these requirements. These requirements may include obtaining copies of specific health records, drug screening, criminal background checks and certain certifications or continuing education courses.
Ongoing evaluation. We continually evaluate our temporary healthcare professionals performance through a verbal and written evaluation process. We receive these evaluations directly from our hospital and healthcare facility clients, and use the feedback to determine appropriate future assignments for each temporary healthcare professional.
Sales, Marketing and Account Management
We market our services to hospitals and healthcare facilities under one corporate brand name, AMN Healthcare, a single staffing provider with seven recruitment sources of temporary healthcare professionals: American Mobile Healthcare, Medical Express, NursesRx, Preferred Healthcare Staffing, HRMC, Thera Tech Staffing and OGrady-Peyton International. Furthermore, we utilize a team approach to servicing our hospital and healthcare facility clients. This team includes:
Regional Client Service Director. Our team of regional client service directors markets our services to prospective hospital and healthcare facility clients, and supervises ongoing contract management and business development of existing clients in each of their territories.
Hospital Account Manager. Once hospital and healthcare facility contracts are obtained by our regional client service directors, our hospital account managers are responsible for soliciting and receiving orders from
9
these clients and working with our recruiters to fill those orders with qualified temporary healthcare professionals. An order is a request from a client hospital or healthcare facility for a temporary healthcare professional to fill an assignment. Depending upon their size and specific needs, one hospital or healthcare facility client may have from one to over 50 open orders at one time.
Because hospitals often list their orders with multiple service providers, open orders may also be listed with our competitors. An order will generally be filled by the company that provides a suitable candidate first, highlighting the need for a large network of temporary healthcare professionals and integrated operating and information systems to quickly and effectively match hospital and healthcare facility client needs with appropriate temporary healthcare professionals.
Clinical Liaison. We liaison with our hospital and healthcare facility clients and temporary healthcare professionals on clinical issues. We continually evaluate our temporary healthcare professionals performance through a verbal and written evaluation process.
The number of our hospital and healthcare facility clients that we have contracts with has grown from approximately 600 in 1993 to over 3,600 and 4,300 clients at the end of 2002 and 2003, respectively. Over 97% of our temporary healthcare professional assignments are at acute-care hospitals. In addition to acute-care hospitals, we also provide services to sub-acute healthcare facilities, dialysis centers, clinics and schools.
Placement
Orders are entered into our information network and are available to the recruiters at all of our recruitment brands. Our recruiters electronically provide our hospital account managers with the personnel profiles of the temporary healthcare professionals who have expressed an interest in a particular assignment. The hospital account manager follows up to arrange a telephone interview between the temporary healthcare professional and the hospital, and confirms offers and placements with the hospital or healthcare facility.
Our recruiters seek to develop and maintain strong and lasting relationships with our temporary healthcare professionals. Each recruiter manages a group of pre-screened temporary healthcare professionals and works to understand the unique needs and desires of each healthcare professional. The recruiter will present open order assignments to a temporary healthcare professional, request that the personnel profile be submitted for placement consideration, arrange a telephone interview with assistance from the hospital account managers, make any special requests for housing and generally facilitate each placement.
In the case of our international temporary healthcare professionals, the recruiters and placement coordinators at our OGrady-Peyton International brand, including those located in the United Kingdom, Australia and South Africa, assist candidates in preparing for the United States nursing examination and subsequently obtaining a U.S. nursing license. These recruiters also assist our international temporary healthcare professionals to obtain petitions to become lawful permanent residents or to obtain work visas prior to their arrival in the United States.
Throughout the typical 13-week assignment, the recruiters will work with the temporary healthcare professionals to review their progress and to determine whether the professionals would like to extend the length of the current assignment, or move to a new hospital or healthcare facility at the end of the assignment term. Our international temporary healthcare professionals are typically placed on longer-term, 18-month assignments as a result of our substantial investment in bringing them to work in the United States. Near completion of the 18-month assignment, our recruiters will work with these temporary healthcare professionals to explore their options for new assignments, including our more traditional 13-week arrangements.
We share orders among our various brands to increase placement opportunities for our temporary healthcare professionals. Our growth in placement volume has been driven by enabling our recruiters at all of our brands to offer more open assignment orders to their temporary healthcare professionals.
10
Housing
We offer substantially all of our temporary healthcare professionals free or subsidized housing while on assignment. Our housing department is centralized and managed at our San Diego, California corporate headquarters and an internally developed software system is used to manage rental properties, furniture vendors and other housing services. Our housing department facilitates the leasing of all apartments and furniture, manages utilities and arranges all housing and roommate assignments for the thousands of temporary healthcare professionals that we place each year. We generally offer our temporary healthcare professionals a free two-bedroom apartment to share with another temporary healthcare professional. If a temporary healthcare professional desires to have a private, one-bedroom apartment, they typically pay a housing fee to us to cover the incremental costs. If a temporary healthcare professional chooses not to accept housing provided by us, they receive a monthly housing stipend in lieu of an apartment. Generally, our international temporary healthcare professionals are provided with increased travel reimbursements and assistance with immigration costs in lieu of free or subsidized housing. We currently lease over 3,000 apartments nationwide with a monthly housing expense of over $4.5 million.
Housing expenses are typically included in the hourly or weekly fees that we charge to our hospital and healthcare facility clients. Based on the contracted billing rate and gross profit for each hospital or healthcare facility client, we estimate a budget for our housing coordinators to utilize when locating apartments for each assignment. We carefully monitor performance of actual housing costs incurred to the housing costs budgeted for each placement. If housing costs rise in a particular city or region, our housing department tracks these trends and communicates with our regional client service directors to obtain increased billing rates to cover these costs. We also negotiate contracts with national property management and furniture rental companies to leverage our size and obtain more favorable pricing and terms.
Temporary Healthcare Professional Payroll
During 2003, approximately 94% of our working temporary healthcare professionals were on our payroll, while approximately 6% were paid directly by the hospital or healthcare facility client. Providing payroll services is a value-added and convenient service that hospitals and healthcare facilities increasingly expect from their supplemental staffing sources. To provide convenience and flexibility to our hospital and healthcare facility clients, we accommodate several different payroll cycles and allow the client to choose the cycle that most closely matches that of their permanent staff. This enables our hospital and healthcare facility clients to integrate management of temporary healthcare professional scheduling and overtime with their permanent staff.
Consistent accuracy and timeliness of making payroll payments is essential to the retention of our temporary healthcare professionals. Our internal payroll service group currently receives and processes timesheets for over 6,000 temporary healthcare professionals. Payroll is typically processed within 72 hours after the completion of each pay period, heightening the importance of having adequately trained and skilled payroll personnel and appropriate operating and information systems. In November 2003, we implemented an upgraded payroll and billing software system for our temporary healthcare professionals. We are now processing payroll in-house, but continuing to outsource the printing, tax deposit and reporting functions to a national payroll processing service. This system provides a platform that will enable us to add enhanced features to better service our healthcare professionals in the future.
Our payroll service group offers our temporary healthcare professionals several service benefits, including multi-account direct deposit, automatic 401(k) deductions, dependent care and flexible spending account deductions, health insurance co-pay deductions and housing co-pay deductions when the temporary healthcare professional chooses to upgrade their housing accommodation.
11
Temporary Healthcare Professional Benefits
In our effort to attract and retain highly qualified traveling professionals, we offer a variety of benefits to our temporary healthcare professionals. These benefits include:
| | Travel Reimbursement. Temporary healthcare professionals receive travel reimbursement for each assignment. Reimbursements are calculated on a per mile basis with a cap on the total, and are often billed as a separate cost to the hospital or healthcare facility client. |
| | Group Medical, Dental and Life Insurance. We pay 100% of premium expenses for medical, dental and life insurance. |
| | Referral Bonuses. Through our referral bonus program, a temporary healthcare professional receives a bonus if he or she successfully refers a new temporary healthcare professional to us. |
| | Completion Bonuses. Some of our assignments offer special completion bonuses, which we pay in a lump sum once the temporary healthcare professional has completed his or her assignment. When offered, completion bonuses usually range from $250 to $3,000 for a 13-week assignment and are typically billed as a separate cost to the hospital or healthcare facility client, with a small markup to cover employer taxes and overhead. |
| | 401(k) Plan and Dependent Care and Medical Reimbursement. We offer immediate enrollment in our 401(k) plan, including matching employer contributions after 1,000 hours of continued service. In addition, we provide pre-tax deductions for employee dependent care expenses and a medical spending account. |
| | Individual Professional Liability Insurance. We provide our temporary healthcare professionals with individual professional liability insurance policies. |
| | Free Continuing Education. We are a fully accredited provider of continuing education by the American Nurses Credentialing Center. Through our professional development center and RN.com, our temporary healthcare professionals receive free continuing education courses and seminars. In addition, they can obtain the information needed to apply for licensure in the state where they will travel. |
Hospital Billing
To accommodate the needs of our hospital clients, we offer two types of billing: payroll contracts and flat rate contracts. During 2003, we billed approximately 94% of working temporary healthcare professionals based on payroll contracts and approximately 6% based on flat rate contracts.
Payroll Contracts. Under a payroll contract, the temporary healthcare professional is our employee for payroll and benefits purposes. Under this arrangement, we bill our hospital and healthcare facility clients at an hourly rate which effectively includes reimbursement for recruitment fees, wages and benefits for the temporary healthcare professional, employer taxes and housing expenses. Overtime, shift differential and holiday hours worked are typically billed at a premium rate. In turn, we pay the temporary healthcare professionals wages, housing and travel costs and benefits. Providing payroll services is a value-added and convenient service that hospitals and healthcare facilities increasingly expect from their supplemental staffing sources. Providing these payroll services, which is cash flow intensive, also gives us a competitive edge over smaller staffing firms.
Flat Rate Contracts. With flat rate billing, the temporary healthcare professional is placed on the hospital or healthcare facility clients payroll. We bill the hospital a flat weekly rate that includes reimbursement for recruitment fees, temporary healthcare professional benefits and typically housing expenses.
Information Systems
Our primary management information and communications systems are centralized and controlled in our corporate headquarters and are utilized in each of our staffing offices. Our financial and payroll systems are
12
primarily centralized at our corporate headquarters and our operational reporting is standardized at all of our offices. In November 2003, we implemented an upgraded payroll and billing software system for our temporary healthcare professionals. We are now processing payroll in-house, but continuing to outsource the printing, tax deposit and reporting functions to a national payroll processing service. This system provides a platform that will enable us to add enhanced features to better service our healthcare professionals in the future.
During the past few years, we have developed a proprietary information system called American Mobile Information Exchange, or AMIE. AMIE is a Windows-based, interactive system that is an important tool in maximizing our productivity and accommodating our multi-brand recruiting strategy. The system was custom-designed for our business model, including integrated processes for temporary healthcare professional and healthcare facility contract management, matching of temporary healthcare professionals to available assignments, temporary healthcare professional file submissions for placements, quality management tracking, controlling compensation packages and managing healthcare facility contract and billing terms. AMIE provides our staff with fast, detailed information regarding individual temporary healthcare professionals and hospital and healthcare facility clients. AMIE also provides a platform for interacting and transacting with temporary healthcare professionals and hospital and healthcare facility clients via the Internet.
Risk Management
We have developed an integrated risk management program that focuses on loss analysis, education and assessment in an effort to reduce our operational costs and risk exposure. We continually analyze our losses on professional liability claims and workers compensation claims to identify trends. This allows us to focus our resources on those areas that may have the greatest impact on us. We have also developed educational materials for distribution to our temporary healthcare professionals that are targeted to address specific work-injury risks and documentation of clinical events. In addition, we have compiled a universal safety manual that every temporary healthcare professional receives each year.
In addition to our proactive measures, we engage in a peer review process of any incidents involving our temporary healthcare professionals. Upon notification of a temporary healthcare professionals involvement in an incident that may result in liability for us, a team of registered nurses reviews the temporary healthcare professionals actions. Our peer review committee makes a prompt determination regarding whether the temporary healthcare professional will continue the assignment and whether we will place the temporary healthcare professional on future assignments.
Competition
The healthcare staffing industry is highly competitive. We compete with both national firms and local and regional firms. We compete with these firms to attract nurses and other healthcare professionals as temporary healthcare professionals and to attract hospital and healthcare facility clients. We compete for temporary healthcare professionals on the basis of customer service and expertise, the quantity, diversity and quality of assignments available, compensation packages, and the benefits that we provide to a temporary healthcare professional while they are on an assignment. We compete for hospital and healthcare facility clients on the basis of the quality of our temporary healthcare professionals, the timely availability of our professionals with requisite skills, the quality, scope and price of our services, our recruitment expertise and the geographic reach of our services.
We believe that larger, nationally established firms enjoy distinct competitive advantages over smaller, local and regional competitors in the travel healthcare staffing industry. Continuing nursing shortages and factors driving the demand for nurses over the past several years have made it increasingly difficult for hospitals to meet their staffing needs. More established firms have a large pool of available nursing candidates, substantial word-of-mouth referral networks and established brand names, enabling them to attract a consistent flow of new applicants. Larger firms generally have a deeper, more comprehensive infrastructure and can also more easily provide payroll services, which are cash flow intensive.
13
Some of our larger competitors in the temporary healthcare staffing sector include Cross Country, InteliStaf/StarMed, Nursefinders, Medical Staffing Network and On Assignment.
Government Regulation
The healthcare industry is subject to extensive and complex federal and state laws and regulations related to professional licensure, conduct of operations, payment for services and payment for referrals. Our business, however, is not directly impacted by or subject to the extensive and complex laws and regulations that generally govern the healthcare industry. The laws and regulations that are applicable to our hospital and healthcare facility clients could indirectly impact our business to a certain extent, but because we provide services on a contract basis and are paid directly by our hospital and healthcare facility clients, we do not have any direct Medicare or managed care reimbursement risk.
Some states require state licensure for businesses that employ and/or assign healthcare personnel to provide healthcare services on-site at hospitals and other healthcare facilities. We are currently licensed in all twelve states that require such licenses.
Most of the temporary healthcare professionals that we employ are required to be individually licensed or certified under applicable state laws. We take prudent steps to ensure that our employees possess all necessary licenses and certifications in all material respects.
We recruit some temporary healthcare professionals from Canada for placement in the United States. Canadian healthcare professionals can come to the United States on TN Visas under the North American Free Trade Agreement. TN Visas are renewable, one-year temporary work visas, which generally allow entrance into the United States provided the healthcare professional presents at the border proof of waiting employment in the United States and evidence of the necessary healthcare practice licenses.
With respect to our recruitment of international temporary healthcare professionals through our OGrady-Peyton International brand, we must comply with certain United States immigration law requirements, including the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. We primarily bring temporary healthcare professionals to the United States as immigrants, or lawful permanent residents (commonly referred to as green card holders). We screen foreign temporary healthcare professionals and assist them in preparing for the national nursing examination and subsequently obtaining a U.S. nursing license. We file petitions with the Immigration and Naturalization Service for a temporary healthcare professional to become a permanent resident of the United States or obtain necessary work visas. Generally, such petitions are accompanied by proof that the temporary healthcare professional has either passed the Commission on Graduates of Foreign Nursing Schools Examination or holds a full and unrestricted state license to practice professional nursing, as well as a contract between us and the temporary healthcare professional demonstrating that there is a bona fide job offer.
Employees
As of December 31, 2003, we had 834 corporate employees. We believe that our employee relations are good. The following chart shows our number of corporate employees by department:
| Recruitment |
222 | |
| Regional Directors and Hospital Account Managers |
76 | |
| Housing, Quality Management and Traveler Services |
229 | |
| Accounting and Payroll |
140 | |
| MIS, Support Services, HR, Marketing and Facilities Staff |
136 | |
| Corporate and Subsidiary Management |
31 | |
| Total Corporate Employees |
834 | |
14
During the fourth quarter of 2003, we had an average of over 6,300 temporary healthcare professionals working on assignment.
Additional Information
We maintain a corporate website at www.amnhealthcare.com/investors. Our Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K and amendments to these reports, are made available, free of charge, through this website as soon as reasonably practicable after being filed with or furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
We believe that our properties are adequate for our current needs. In addition, we believe that adequate space can be obtained to meet our foreseeable business needs. We relocated and consolidated our San Diego, California headquarters during the second half of 2003. We currently occupy office space in ten locations, as identified in the chart below:
| Location |
Square Feet | |
| San Diego, California (corporate headquarters) |
175,672 | |
| Westminster, Colorado |
29,152 | |
| Huntersville, North Carolina |
25,967 | |
| Ft. Lauderdale, Florida |
25,408 | |
| Savannah, Georgia |
5,656 | |
| London (United Kingdom) |
2,691 | |
| Birmingham (United Kingdom) |
2,368 | |
| Perth (Australia) |
292 | |
| Sydney (Australia) |
118 | |
| Cape Town (South Africa) |
50 | |
| Total |
267,374 | |
We are subject to various claims and legal actions in the ordinary course of our business. Some of these matters include professional liability, payroll and employee-related matters and inquiries and investigations by governmental agencies regarding our employment practices. We are not aware of any pending or threatened litigation that we believe is reasonably likely to have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, financial position or liquidity.
Our hospital and healthcare facility clients may also become subject to claims, governmental inquiries and investigations and legal actions to which we may become a party relating to services provided by our professionals. From time to time, and depending upon the particular facts and circumstances, we may be subject to indemnification obligations under our contracts with our hospital and healthcare facility clients relating to these matters. At this time, we are not aware of any such pending or threatened litigation that we believe is reasonably likely to have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, financial position or liquidity.
Item 4. Submission of Matters to a Vote of Security Holders
No matters were submitted to a vote of security holders during the fourth quarter of fiscal 2003.
15
PART II
Item 5. Market for Registrants Common Equity and Related Stockholder Matters
Our common stock has traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol AHS since our initial public offering on November 13, 2001. Prior to that time, there was no public trading market for our common stock. The following table sets forth, for the periods indicated, the high and low sales prices reported by the New York Stock Exchange.
| High |
Low | |||||
| Year Ended December 31, 2002 |
||||||
| First Quarter |
$ | 28.40 | $ | 20.50 | ||
| Second Quarter |
$ | 37.40 | $ | 26.00 | ||
| Third Quarter |
$ | 35.06 | $ | 17.50 | ||
| Fourth Quarter |
$ | 21.80 | $ | 13.41 | ||
| Year Ended December 31, 2003 |
||||||
| First Quarter |
$ | 18.95 | $ | 9.25 | ||
| Second Quarter |
$ | 13.09 | $ | 8.90 | ||
| Third Quarter |
$ | 17.10 | ||||