ANSOS: Never Stop Innovating

Early Days
ANSOS was founded by Michael Warner in 1983 and began as a research project that he conducted at Duke University. He wanted to examine why nurse scheduling was such a complex issue for health systems. Warner engaged nurses as he developed the first product, which was formatted on floppy disk. Starting small, business ramped up quickly, gaining 20-30 customers each year for the first decade.

The company began with a core product, ANSOS Staff Scheduling, which serves as a productivity management solution for caregivers. Today, the product continues to be an essential platform for clients as it anticipates workload requirements, tracks staffing variations in real time and balances clinical needs with the staff’s professional goals.

In 1993, Gia Milo-Slagle, director, product management and development, workforce capacity solutions, joined the ANSOS team. Back then, there were just 16 employees serving clients throughout the world. Milo-Slagle had left IBM to join ANSOS, and worked in a variety of positions, from marketing and implementation to education and sales, then consulting and account management. No matter the position, a key part of her job was building relationships with customers and understanding what they needed from the product.

“Our motto was always ‘bringing staffing to the bedside.’ We were singularly focused on healthcare staffing, which was our differentiator,” said Milo-Slagle. “Our granular understanding of how nursing productivity worked made us successful.”

Growing to meet customer needs
Over the next two decades, the company went through several acquisitions and consistent enhancements and growth. In 1996, the company rolled out ANSOS One-Staff, which shifted the trajectory to enterprise-wide functionality, supporting all areas of the hospital.  The company acquired e-Shift, an open shift management tool, and developed its own Web Scheduler ™ module. These functions allowed nurses to manage their own schedules and bid for open shifts. ANSOS also added an acuity manager to the base app, which gave health systems an easy way to assign staff based on the acuity of patients at a given time. These features offered plug-and-play solutions for existing customers, and integrated benefits for new ones.  

After McKesson acquired the company in 2007, ANSOS Time and Attendance rolled out to connect staffing functions to time capture, while reporting real-time data for payroll dashboards

Despite the acquisitions, the innovative spirit of ANSOS remained. By maintaining our brand, core team, roadmap and aggressive pace, we were able to keep enhancing our product and stay ahead of the curve for our customers,” Milo-Slagle said.

In 2011, the rise of the EHR led ANSOS to release Acuity Aggregator – an engine that takes charting elements from the EHR, applies machine learning and determines a patient’s level of assessment to inform the staffing demand. Then, in 2013, ANSOS launched its mobile app, ANSOS2Go .

“The ANSOS team is driven to always be the best for our loyal customers and staff. Our average tenure for core staff is 22 years. We are all very dedicated to making a difference for our clients,” said Milo-Slagle.

Joining HealthStream
The company was purchased by Change Healthcare in 2017, then by HealthStream in 2020. Through it all, ANSOS continues to be recognized as a market leader in nurse and staff scheduling by KLAS.

The addition of ANSOS expanded HealthStream’s growing portfolio of solutions for staff scheduling and workforce management.

“There is great potential to help healthcare providers better engage with their staff and align tech platforms to their needs,” said Scott McQuigg, senior vice president and general manager, HealthStream Scheduling & Capacity Management. “ANSOS is an important component of our vision for the future of scheduling, and we are excited to further their innovative spirit and dedication to customers in this new chapter for the company.”