When America’s Largest Hospitals Couldn’t Hire Fast Enough, They Built Their Own AI Recruiter

The problem was draining America’s major health systems. Critical nursing positions sat vacant for months while prestigious medical centers burned through millions on temporary staff and overtime pay. Human recruiters were overwhelmed, scheduling conflicts created weeks-long delays, and qualified nurses were disappearing into the hiring black hole that had become standard across American healthcare.

Johns Hopkins, NYPresbyterian, Baylor Scott & White, and Sutter Health were all facing the same brutal math: in America, it takes an average of 86 days to fill a single nursing position. In an industry where every unfilled role meant compromised patient care and skyrocketing costs, that timeline had become unsustainable.

So these major health systems did something unprecedented. Rather than accept the broken system, they built their own solution.

The Collaborative Experiment

The four health systems partnered with Incredible Health, the largest AI-powered healthcare career marketplace, on an ambitious proposition: build AI agents specifically designed to solve healthcare’s hiring crisis.

The health systems shared their pain points and worked directly with Incredible Health’s development team to create Lyn, a purpose-built AI voice interview agent for employers. Lyn would conduct initial screenings, verify credentials, and generate detailed candidate summaries. Incredible Health also developed Gale, an AI career partner for healthcare workers to help them prepare resumes, practice interviews, and navigate career decisions.

The development process was intensive, drawing on millions of real healthcare career paths and hiring interactions accumulated over seven years on Incredible Health’s marketplace. The AI agents needed to understand the nuances between medical specialties—the difference between ICU and med-surg experience, the specific requirements for OR roles, the credentials needed for ambulatory care positions.

For Gale, which was built as a career partner for healthcare workers, this meant creating an AI agent that could instantly extract licenses, clinical roles, hospital types, and specialties from uploaded resumes, then fill in missing information with smart suggestions. The agent also needed to conduct realistic voice-based interview simulations, asking real-world clinical questions during voice conversations based on each candidate’s unique background and specialty, then provide tailored feedback and generate scorecards highlighting strengths and areas for improvement.

Lyn’s requirements were equally complex. As an AI voice interview agent, it needed to conduct consistent voice interviews across hundreds of candidates, verify qualifications and certifications with precision, and showcase what made each hospital unique to attract top talent during voice conversations. Most importantly, it had to work around the clock, eliminating the scheduling bottlenecks that had plagued traditional hiring processes.

The Stealth Rollout

What happened next was remarkable for its scale. The AI agents went live across 1,500 health systems and 1 million healthcare workers nationwide. For months, Gale has been helping professionals optimize their resumes, prep for interviews, and navigate their job searches. More recently, Lyn has been actively rolled out across health systems, and the results have been staggering.

Healthcare workers using Gale give the AI agent a 90% approval rating and say that they would recommend it to their peers. Hospitals using Lyn to conduct initial candidate screenings saw a 20% increase in nurses agreeing to interview—a critical metric in a labor market where top candidates often have multiple options.

Beyond the Numbers

The rollout revealed something counterintuitive about healthcare hiring. Workers weren’t resistant to AI involvement—they welcomed it. Nurses particularly appreciated what many described as the “lower stakes” nature of initial AI interactions, which allowed them to present themselves without the immediate pressure of human judgment.

For hospitals, the AI agents are solving multiple problems simultaneously. Recruiting teams, overwhelmed by the volume of initial screenings and scheduling logistics, can redirect their energy toward high-value activities. The AI agents handle the administrative burden while humans focus on strategic decisions.

“Healthcare professionals dedicate themselves to caring for others every day, and they deserve a career partner that takes care of them,” said Dr. Iman Abuzeid, co-founder and CEO of Incredible Health. “As the first healthcare career marketplace to introduce AI in December 2023, we are excited to build on our existing capabilities with Gale and Lyn, which empowers both healthcare workers and employers to navigate hiring with increased speed, personalization, and clarity.”

The announcement of the agents comes at a critical moment for American healthcare. A 2024 survey of healthcare executives from Incredible Health found that 90% predict the nurse shortage will worsen in the coming years, with the U.S. projected to be one million nurses short by 2030.

As healthcare systems nationwide grapple with staffing shortages and financial pressures, Incredible Health’s AI agents offer a roadmap for using technology to solve human workforce challenges.