Shannon Schleiden and her husband Dan created MedOne Pro in 2019 with a simple, but powerful, vision: to create the best nurse-staffing agency in existence. Their mission is to put families first, treat nurses with the respect they have earned, pay them what they are worth, and provide the best to those they serve.

“It’s more about the purpose than it is about the money for us. We’ve been there, we’ve done that, we know what it’s like,” Shannon Schleiden says.

Shannon, Dan, and their son Jacob run the firm out of their Bellefonte, Pennsylvania home. Shannon oversees the people side while Dan does the office side. They have more 500 contractors working all over the US, with plans to expand into underserved destinations internationally. They staff every type of nursing, all types of therapy (e.g., respiratory, physical), and have begun placing doctors as well.

“We’re family-owned and we work out of our house. We keep overhead low so we can offer more to our staff. When they call any of us, they get the whole team, not just one liaison. It’s very a different approach,” Dan says.

While being a woman-owned business provides access higher government contracts, funding and loans, they don’t use their diversity status to promote their company. “I have travelers who appreciate the woman-owned status. It helps us get the initial click. But when people find out how good our rates are and that we’re working for them and not a corporation, that’s why they go with us.”

Shannon wanted to use her 15 years of travel-nursing experience to create the kind of agency she would have wanted to work for. “I’ll never forget when I was returning from a traveling job and got stranded in an airport in the middle of the night,” Shannon says. “The agency I worked for was closed; there was no one to help me. I remember thinking, ‘I would never abandon a nurse like that.’”

Hiring the Best Leads to DE&I

And that’s their  approach to diversity, equity and inclusion as well. It’s simple. “We just want to offer the best. We’ll hire anyone who is good at what they do. If you’re qualified and licensed and have good ethics, we’ll hire you,” Dan says. They do recruit in minority-rich areas, but the goal is not to meet a quota — it’s to find talented, dedicated specialists. “We live in a diverse world. People aren’t segregated any more. We can either be good and kind to each other and benefit from what everyone has to offer, or we can live in a cave Shannon says.

“If you surround yourself with great people, you’ll do great things. Everybody has their niche, it doesn’t matter what color you are. … When you find that person with that special skill, good things happen,” Shannon says.

And once they find that person, they offer benefits to take care of them and earn their loyalty. If a nurse wants to put the work into development, such as online learning, continuing education, or a certification program, MedOne Pro covers it. “Anything that pertains to the job, we pay for. And if you work a solid year, we’ll pay for a four-person family vacation.”

Looking Forward
At present, the company is in the process of getting certified by the Joint Commission. “It shows a higher level of what you can offer, and gives the facility more peace of mind that your people are up-to-date with their requirements,” Shannon says. “And some facilities require it.”

They are also investing in technology to streamline the placement process and enable their contractors to do more online. They have a database that contractors use to upload their profile and see jobs. “In this tech world, people don’t want to talk anymore. Some only want to text. So we’re working on an app where you click on a job and complete everything yourself,” Shannon says.

Their long-term goals include plans for expansion. To be able to serve more areas, they’d like to have a satellite office in every state. “We feel it’s important to have somebody in each state who knows the hospitals, the areas. They are going to know a more about the area than we are,” Dan says.