Curtis Anderson is the CEO and founder of Nursa, which exists to put a nurse at the bedside of every patient in need.

Curtis grew up in a small town in southern Idaho where he learned how to do more with less. He built his first computer at 12, got access to the internet, and started using technology to create value. Curtis purchased a staffing agency and quickly saw there was a more efficient digital way to help nurses, facilities, and patients.

At Nursa, we’re obsessed with simplifying healthcare staffing because we know the stakes are real: every shift we fill means better care for patients and less burnout for nurses.

Nursa’s early days were bootstrapped with personal cash. The company grew from 20,000 to 2.5MM patient hours annually in less than 36 months. Today Nursa is headquartered outside of Salt Lake City, and the entire team is passionate about making the process of care delivery more efficient for everyone. Nursa has now raised over $100 million and is trusted by a growing community of more than 1,500 facilities and 100,000 nurses nationwide.

What is Nursa and why did you decide to create it?

Nursa enables healthcare facility managers who need short-term help to connect with the qualified nurses who can fill those shifts. It sounds simple because it is, but it hasn’t historically been that way.

Historically, staffing agencies have filled short-term gaps in all kinds of ways with talent they directly employ. They offer a portion of their talent pool to the facility in need, but they generally seek longer-term contracts. Plus there are often multiple parties involved between the manager in the facility that needs help and the nurse who wants to work.

It’s an adult game of telephone – just like the one you used to play in elementary school. With so many people involved, the message going in one side never comes out the same at the end. I know this experience personally, as I operated a nurse staffing agency. Filling per-diem shifts for the agency team was nearly impossible, especially on same day timelines.

Nursa is not an agency. Nursa is intentionally different.

There are no middlemen between the manager at the facility and the nurse who wants to work. Our software enables healthcare managers facing staffing shortages or fluctuating patient loads to seamlessly connect with a vast network of highly skilled and credentialed nurses. These nurses are ready and able to fill short-term gaps, ensuring continuity of care and maintaining optimal patient outcomes. And if it turns out that both parties like the experience they have with one another enough, then there are no fees associated with the facility hiring that nurse full time. We’re focused on being the connector, or the digital switchboard. It’s simpler than ever before on Nursa.

What is Nursa’s mission and how has it changed since founding the company?

Nursa exists to get a nurse to the bedside of every patient in need. We’ve been unwavering in our commitment to actualizing that mission every day since founding the company in 2019. It drives every aspect of the company’s operations, product feature advancements, and partnerships we seek with facility teams and nurses.

While our mission has not changed, the evolution of Nursa has focused on refining and expanding the capabilities of our platform to more efficiently and effectively achieve that mission. That includes continuous improvements in features such as:

Nurse Matching Algorithms: We enhance the precision with which nurses are matched to open shifts weekly, with consideration to specialization, experience, location, and specific facility requirements.

Credentialing: We have simplified the process for nurses to join the Nursa platform, and carry their profile through their career with more ease than ever before. We have industry-leading robust verification of licenses, certifications, and background checks, ensuring we maintain the highest standards of safety and compliance. We are the industry’s only Gold Seal Joint Commission National Quality platform marketplace partner.

Geographic Expansion: We continue to expand the reach of the Nursa platform to new markets and states every month, boasting more than 400,000 clinician profiles and more than 3,400 facility partners nationwide to date.

In essence, Nursa’s commitment to our founding mission has led to a dynamic evolution of technological solutions, all aimed at optimizing the connection of nursing talent to the most critical needs, ensuring that patients consistently receive the high-quality care they deserve.

How have you seen the nurse staffing crisis evolve since the pandemic?

The ongoing nursing shortage isn’t a new problem—it’s a recurring cycle that’s defined American healthcare for almost a century. We’ve seen waves of shortages stretch back as far as the 1930s, persist through World War II, and continue surfacing every few decades.

The modern shortage period began around 2000, when initial projections indicated a modest 6% deficit between nursing supply and demand. Fast forward to today, and we’re missing well over 1 million nurses per year. The pandemic didn’t create this crisis, but it made it impossible to ignore, accelerating burnout and driving many out of the field altogether.

This cycle isn’t because we lack talented, licensed nurses. It’s that nurse labor is treated as just another expense hospitals try to minimize. When Medicare began bundling nurse wages into fixed payments, staffing decisions shifted away from the people-focused HR teams to spreadsheets and supply chain logic. Case in point: in 2020, when shift demand on the platform was surging, I watched facilities try to fill ICU nurse shifts at just $15/hour— never mind that the typical rate was closer to $65/hour—and then wonder why no one would fill them. Not only did the cheap wages not attract anyone, it showed exactly how undervalued nursing expertise had become.

So, where does that leave us? Nurses are leaving—not because they don’t want to care for patients, but because the system itself signals over and over that their work isn’t recognized or compensated at the levels it should be. If nothing changes, then nothing changes. This cycle of shortages and instability is destined to repeat, and each round hits harder than the last, and Nursa is here to help change the conversation permanently, leading to a better future for all parties involved.

Can you share examples of how Nursa has had a tangible impact on facilities and clinicians?

As a team, we talk to nurses and facilities every day. We listen with intent to understand their experiences with our platform and the nursing profession overall – what frustrates them, what motivates them, and what could help them better do their jobs.

We’re proud to have built a network of more than 400,000 nurses nationwide who value the flexible lifestyle Nursa enables. Beatriz Perez recently told the San Diego Union-Tribune that Nursa has allowed her to compress her shifts into fewer days so she can care for her five young kids and attend school two days per week to earn her RN. “I’m getting in my 40 hours, but I’m better able to live my life,” she told the Union-Tribune.

On the other side of the equation, the more than 3,400 facilities we work with enjoy real-time access to vetted, quality talent for per diem nursing shifts. For example, our partner EmpRes has implemented Nursa across 23 buildings. The relationship has allowed them to decrease dependence on external agencies and reduce their spend by improving turnover and retention rates. Over the course of our work together, they’ve moved from 11 external agencies to just 3, and they’ve saved $300,000 in hire-away fees by recruiting 23 LPNs and 50+ CNAs for full-time roles after they completed shifts through Nursa. They also eliminated all overtime costs and reduced hiring and recruitment fees by eliminating online advertisements, dedicated recruiters and the lengthy interview process associated with hiring new clinicians.

Our partner Forest Grove implemented Nursa at their SNF and LTC in Oregon in part to help them fill weekend shifts and deal with last-minute callouts. Now 100% of their posted shifts are filled by clinicians – often within just minutes of the post going live.

As Nursa continues to expand, what have been some of the most important lessons learned in using tech to address staffing concerns?

We’ve learned a ton as Nursa has grown. The biggest thing is just how much it matters to give nurses genuine control over their work schedules. Every nurse is an “I”, not an “it”.

When you let clinicians manage work that circumstantially fits their lives, not only do you help them avoid burnout, facilities also see better fill rates and less turnover. Tech really shines when it automates those tedious tasks and gives managers the right data in real time. Suddenly, filling a shift, or six weeks of shifts doesn’t have to be a scramble or a guessing game.

Also, involving nurses directly in how we build these tools has been huge by supporting adoption and ensuring the platform helps in the ways we envision. At the end of the day, the lesson for us is that technology should serve people, not the other way around.

Our mission, and our platform truly supports staff wellbeing and better patient outcomes, that’s how you create lasting impact.

What’s next for Nursa?

At Nursa, we’re obsessed with simplifying healthcare staffing because we know the stakes are real: every shift we fill means better care for patients and less burnout for nurses.

What’s next for us is making it even easier. Our team’s systematic approach mirrors successful platform giants starting with hyper-focus on a single niche before methodically expanding outward. With strong marketplace performance over the last several years, we’ll soon embark on transformative opportunities solving challenges across the comprehensive healthcare workforce ecosystem through dynamic service expansions.

Nursa is uniquely positioned to soon deliver personalized user experiences that agencies cannot replicate. As traditional staffing agencies struggle to drive technological adoption, our AI-first approach will enable us to continue to deliver flexibility, autonomy, and tools that continue to improve patient care and the lives of every nurse and individual responsible for providing that care.

Our mission runs deep, and will take a lot to deliver. We’re truly just getting started and we can’t wait to show the world what’s next.

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