How UnityPoint Health Gave Time Back to Clinical Leaders, Accelerated Candidate Decisions, and Strengthened Clinician Alignment
As its contingent workforce strategy continued to evolve, UnityPoint Health identified an opportunity to create greater consistency and efficiency across clinical interviewing while preserving the clinical insight and decision-making control important to its leaders.
Working with Trio Workforce Solutions, UnityPoint Health implemented Trio Clinical Interviewing across its nursing and allied workforce. The model shifts much of the interview coordination and candidate evaluation workload from unit leaders to Trio’s experienced clinical team, using detailed, unit-specific criteria established by UnityPoint Health to guide each interview.
From program launch through July, Trio completed 2,951 clinical interviews\ and generated 1,724 offers, returning an estimated 1,475 hours to clinical leadership and representing approximately $76,700 in estimated leadership time savings. Candidate outreach occurs within approximately two hours, while average client decision turnaround improved from approximately 1.5 days to 0.8 days — nearly 50% faster.
The increased speed and efficiency have been accompanied by strong quality outcomes. In Q2, UnityPoint Health achieved a 7.78% cancellation-after-start rate, including a 4.18% termination rate and 3.6% incomplete-assignment rate.
Key Outcomes
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1,475 hours returned to clinical leadership
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$76,700 in estimated leadership time savings
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2,951 clinical interviews
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1,724 offers
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Nearly 50% faster client decision turnaround
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7.78% Q2 cancellation-after-start rate
Evolving the Clinical Interview Process
UnityPoint Health historically used a combination of approaches to evaluate contingent clinicians. Depending on the situation, clinical leaders could participate directly in interviews while other candidates moved through more streamlined offer pathways.
As workforce needs evolved, leadership saw an opportunity to create a more consistent interviewing experience across UnityPoint Health while balancing three critical priorities:
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Moving quickly enough to compete for in-demand clinicians
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Maintaining appropriate clinical insight into candidate fit
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Reducing the administrative demands placed on nursing leaders
The objective was not simply to make interviews faster. It was to create a scalable process that could preserve quality and control while giving clinical leaders more time to focus on their teams, operations, and patient care.
Trio Clinical Interviewing provided that model.
Translating Unit Knowledge Into a Scalable Interviewing Model
Successful clinical interviewing depends on understanding what makes a clinician successful within a specific care
environment.
To capture that knowledge, UnityPoint Health and Trio developed approximately 500 Unit Clinical Discovery forms covering individual units across the organization. These forms document unit-specific clinical requirements, patient populations, behavioral expectations, preferred experience, and other factors that can influence candidate success.
Trio’s experienced clinical interviewers use this information to evaluate candidates against the needs of the actual unit rather than relying solely on basic position requirements.
UnityPoint Health initially planned to introduce Clinical Interviewing through a focused pilot. After reviewing the opportunity, executive nursing leadership elected to move forward with a broader system-wide rollout.
That decision required close collaboration across nursing and allied health teams, including communication, education, and support as leaders became familiar with the new workflow. The result was a scalable interviewing model built around the health system’s own clinical expectations.
Returning Nearly 1,500 Hours to Clinical Leadership
One of the clearest measures of the program’s impact is the volume of interview activity clinical leaders no longer need to manage themselves.
From program launch through July, Trio conducted 2,951 clinical interviews, resulting in 1,724 offers. Using an estimated 30 minutes of leadership time returned for each interview, that activity represents approximately 1,475 hours returned to clinical leadership.
Rather than spending that time coordinating and conducting interviews with contingent candidates, nursing leaders can redirect it toward patient care, clinical operations, staff development, and other leadership priorities.
The financial impact is measurable as well. Using UnityPoint Health’s average clinical manager hourly rate of $52, the estimated 1,475 leadership hours returned represent approximately $76,700 in leadership time savings.
The scale demonstrates that Clinical Interviewing is doing more than accelerating individual interviews. It is shifting a recurring operational workload away from clinical leadership while maintaining a clinician-led evaluation process.
“One of the things I am most proud of is that this work helped us solve two important challenges at the same time. Since the height of the pandemic, UnityPoint Health has reduced contract labor utilization by more than 60%, and creating a more efficient, clinically focused interview process has been an important part of that journey. By partnering with Trio, we were able to streamline a time-intensive process while maintaining the quality standards and clinical oversight our leaders expect. Just as importantly, leader satisfaction with this model has been extremely positive because it gives valuable time back to our nurse leaders and managers. Instead of spending hours coordinating and conducting interviews, they can focus their energy where it matters most, supporting patients, developing team members, and leading their operations. The result is a process that improves speed, strengthens candidate alignment, and allows our leaders to spend more time making a meaningful impact at the bedside and within their teams.”
—Sarah Brown, Chief Nursing Officer, UnityPoint Health
Moving Faster in a Competitive Talent Market
Speed matters when qualified clinicians may be considering multiple opportunities at the same time.
Through Trio Clinical Interviewing, candidate outreach occurs within approximately two hours, allowing the health system to begin engaging qualified clinicians quickly.
UnityPoint Health has also seen measurable improvement in its own decision cycle.
Average client decision turnaround improved from approximately 1.5 days to 0.8 days. That represents a reduction of nearly 50%.
A faster process can reduce the time qualified clinicians remain in limbo and help UnityPoint Health compete more effectively for talent.
Importantly, greater speed does not mean giving up control. Trio manages the clinical interview workflow and can advance qualified clinicians through the offer process, while UnityPoint Health retains final decision authority and a defined opportunity to review each placement.
The result is a model that increases speed while keeping workforce governance with UnityPoint Health.
Strengthening Quality Alongside Speed
Efficiency only creates lasting value if the clinicians selected are well aligned with the environments in which they will work.
UnityPoint Health’s Q2 results demonstrate that faster interviewing and reduced leadership burden have not required the organization to compromise its expectations for candidate fit. During the quarter, its cancellation-after-start rate was 7.78%, consisting of 4.18% terminations and 3.6% incomplete assignments. Monthly results remained consistently low, with the cancellation-after-start rate reaching 5.83% in June.
The outcomes reinforce the importance of combining speed with clinical context. Unit-specific discovery gives Trio’s
interviewers the information needed to assess candidates against the requirements and expectations of individual care environments.
Quality outcomes extend across Trio’s Clinical Interviewing programs. Placed clinicians have earned an average clinical quality score of 4,75 out of 5.0, based on performance evaluations completed by clinical leaders.
Workforce stability carries financial implications as well. Although permanent employee turnover and contingent assignment cancellations are distinct measures, industry research demonstrates the broader cost of workforce disruption. The 2026 NSI National Health Care Retention & RN Staffing Report estimates the average cost of turnover for a bedside RN at $60,090, with each percentage-point change in RN turnover costing or saving the average hospital approximately $295,000 annually.
While those figures should not be applied directly to contingent assignment cancellations, it illustrates why clinician alignment matters. Preventable early terminations and incomplete assignments can create additional recruiting, onboarding, replacement, and operational demands while leaving healthcare organizations with an unexpected staffing need.
“Across the healthcare staffing industry, stronger clinical interviewing improves alignment before placement; reducing preventable cancellations, early terminations, onboarding expenses, and operational disruption. When the right clinician is matched to the right environment from the start, hospitals protect patients, support their teams, and realize meaningful financial and time savings.”
—Bambi Gore, Chief Clinical Officer, Trio Workforce Solutions
Building Continuous Improvement into the Process
Clinical Interviewing continues to evolve after implementation.
Trio and UnityPoint Health regularly review program data, including termination and cancellation trends at the unit level.
When patterns emerge, the teams can revisit discovery information, interview questions, or evaluation criteria to identify opportunities for refinement.
That feedback loop helps the interview model adapt alongside UnityPoint Health and supports continued alignment between candidate selection and unit needs.
Rather than treating interviewing as a stand-alone administrative task, UnityPoint Health has connected clinical requirements, candidate evaluation, offer activity, and outcome data into a more coordinated process.
That approach reflects Trio’s broader role as healthcare’s workforce orchestration platform — connecting workforce decisions that often happen separately and helping healthcare organizations govern them through one operating model.
More Time for Leaders. Faster Decisions. Continued Control.
What began as an opportunity to evolve the clinical interview process has become a system-wide workforce capability.
By combining UnityPoint Health’s knowledge of its clinical environments with Trio’s clinical interviewing expertise,
UnityPoint Health has created a process capable of moving candidates quickly without requiring nursing leaders to
personally manage every interview.
The result is measurable: more than 1,475 hours returned to clinical leadership, nearly 50% faster client decisions, $76,700 in estimated leadership time savings, and strong quality outcomes across thousands of clinical interviews.
For UnityPoint Health, Clinical Interviewing has created additional operational capacity while preserving the visibility, clinical standards, and decision authority its leaders expect. It is a model designed not simply to move faster, but to make better use of the time, knowledge, and resources already within its workforce.
What could your clinical leaders do with more time?
Trio Clinical Interviewing can help your organization accelerate hiring, strengthen candidate alignment, and return valuable capacity to nursing and allied health leaders.
Take 15 minutes to talk with a Trio expert about what Clinical Interviewing could look like for your organization.
