12,000 workers. One strike, two waves. Zero glitches.

01 · Situation

The hospitals had to stay open.

The health system faced one strike in two waves: first five days, then, a few months later, an open-ended walkout that lasted four weeks. The union called the second wave the largest open-ended health care strike in U.S. history.

Patients still needed care. That meant bringing in, credentialing, and placing thousands of contingent workers on a tight timeline.

02 · Problem

Too many versions of the truth.

The process was being run on Excel, text messages, and SharePoint. Every team had its own copy of the list.

• Version control broke down, and data accuracy went with it
• Nobody had one view of who was cleared, who was in transit, and who was on site
• Each handoff, from recruiting to credentialing to placement, was a chance to lose someone

Historically, operations like this are full of glitches. With patient care on the line, that wasn’t an option.

03 · Action

One system for the whole pipeline.

I stood up a Smartsheet solution right away, then kept evolving it as the strike went on.

1. Five workstreams, one command center. Order management, credentialing, onboarding into systems, transportation to and from hotels, and housing, all reached through one Work App link. Every worker was tracked from submittal to placement on site.
2. Partnered with the staffing firm. We worked hand in hand with the external travel nurse staffing partner, with live visibility into recruiting numbers and conversion.
3. One source of truth. No more competing spreadsheets. Leaders, recruiters, and site teams all worked from the same live data.
4. The work finds you. Trigger-based alerts moved each worker forward. Checking in at credentialing, for example, automatically notified the health screening team.
5. Built to flex. The solution kept evolving as the work grew, from the five-day first wave to the open-ended second wave.

04 · Result

It just worked.

More than 12,000 contingent workers were onboarded and deployed across both waves of a strike that cost the health system about $750M. The operation ran without a glitch, where this kind of mobilization is usually full of them.

Adoption was the quiet win. Station leads, schedulers, and area leaders who had never used Smartsheet were comfortable within hours, because it looked familiar, had one front door, and sent them only the work that was theirs.

The same approach works anywhere a workforce has to move fast and spreadsheets can’t keep up: surges, mergers, new site openings, and seasonal ramps.