If you work in a human resource department and have a need for medical personnel to fill a position, imagine making one phone call instead of sorting through umpteen-dozen resumes and scheduling interviews.

Staffing companies say they can do all of that for you — and even more.

“We cater our contracts to our client’s specific needs,” said Andrea Jones, business development manager for Kable Comprehensive Healthcare Staffing. “If you need temporary personnel to cover for a leave of absence, or if you want to request a temp-to-perm candidate or even if you just want to alleviate the administrative and recruiting burden on finding a permanent employee — we can do it all.”

“We are certified in human resource consulting and we can provide things from supplemental staffing to a full-service professional employment organization where we become your human resource department,” said Leslie Kahn-Bell, owner-operator of Cirrus Concept Consulting.

It isn’t only hospitals that are seeing advantages to using a staffing company.

“Some acute-care type of facilities, correctional facilities, VA-type of hospitals, psychiatric facilities and long-term care — places like that,” said Alex North, recruiter for Supplemental Health Care. “We hire employees that work for our company and then we place them at health care facilities.”

Doctors’ offices and clinics are other organizations that use staffing companies.

Staffing companies also take over another onerous chore — background checks.

“We do the BCI background checks and we do drug-testing,” North said. “We really screen our employees because of concerns in the industry of people going from agency to agency that are not the high-quality (candidates).”

“We do full-service screening, check their references, verify their education. We do federal and state background investigations and we do Social Security traces,” Kahn-Bell said.

“KCHS provides comprehensive background screening on all applicants,” Jones said. “Our background checks are seven-plus years federal, state and county.”

All three agencies provide nurses as well as allied health-care personnel. Most often the caregiver remains an employee of the staffing company. The medical facility pays the staffing company which, in turn, pays and provides benefits to the employee.

KCHS provides health care professionals to the Dayton-Cincinnati area and is a sister company to Kable Staffing Resources, which is a national staffing agency serving light industry. Supplemental is part of a national chain of health-service staffing companies and Cirrus is a locally-owned and operated facility that is run by registered nurses.