Anyone here own/closed a healthcare/nurse staffing business? Looking to connect.

April 20, 2026

by a searcher from University of Illinois at Chicago in Chicago, IL, USA

Looking to connect with anyone who has been in the market for, or currently operates, a nurse staffing agency. I’m close to signing an LOI on an east coast agency doing ~$450K SDE, placing primarily into SNFs on a per diem basis. Trying to get smarter on the operations side and how the market has settled post-COVID. Would love to hear from anyone active in the space or who has done diligence in this pocket. Drop a comment and I’ll DM. Thanks in advance!

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Reply by a searcher
from Binghamton University, State University of New York in New York City, NY, USA

Hi, Not an operator but we completed a QoE on a healthcare deal last month and are currently working on another healthcare deal. Most searchers at the pre-LOI stage treat QoE as a financial check when the real money is lost on structural things the seller's P&L is quietly hiding, which is why so many of these deals blow up post-close on stuff that could have been caught in a week of diligence. A few things worth pressure-testing or clarifying with the seller before you sign the deal at $450K SDE: * Ask for the raw general ledger and see if expenses are booked monthly or dumped in one year-end journal entry, because if it's the latter, the monthly trending isn't real and neither are the add-backs sitting on top of it. * Look at payroll accounts across 3 years and see if the same labor cost is bouncing between account names, because that's usually where the true labor number gets hidden, and in staffing you also need to confirm 1099 vs W-2 exposure since reclassification is the single biggest post-close surprise in this space. * If AR is included in the purchase, get an aging report by payer and by facility instead of a summary, and push for a working capital peg, otherwise you're quietly paying full price for whatever slice of that AR never collects. * Ask for shift volume by facility, not revenue by client, because the client list almost always looks more diversified than the actual shift distribution, and one SNF quietly driving 40% of shifts is the kind of concentration you find out about the day you own the business. * Get the full owner extraction picture (charitable, vehicle, cell, family on payroll, distributions, etc) before trusting the $450K SDE number, because sellers tend to add back what's convenient and leave out what isn't. Just for your reference, we work with buyers throughout the entire deal lifecycle, so if you want I can review your deal and share my thoughts before you submit the LOI, and obviously no charge for that. DM me here on Search Funder and we can go from there.

Reply by a lender
from Cornell University in Los Angeles, CA, USA

Hi Anon - nice to meet you. I have successfully closed on healthcare staffing businesses in the past. You'll need cash to bridge payroll. SNFs pay you in###-###-#### days, but you pay your nurses every week or two. That gap will eat your bank account fast. When you set up your SBA loan, ask the lender to add extra working capital on top of the purchase price so you're not stuck scrambling for cash in month two. You may also want to look into looking into working with factoring agencies to get your cash in a bit faster. We have a lot experience financing healthcare staffing companies via the SBA. If you ever need help reviewing a deal, I am happy to help. We work with all the major SBA lenders. The bank pay us after your loan closes, so this is a 100% free service for you. You can email me directly at redacted or schedule a meeting with me: https://cal.com/francodeguzman/30min. Look forward to chatting!

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