The 2025 Seasonal Surge Playbook: 60 Players Preparing Healthcare for Winter Peaks

Every winter, healthcare systems in Europe and Canada enter surge season. Seasonal flu, RSV, and ongoing COVID variants collide with existing backlogs, creating three compounding risks:

1. Overtime costs & staff burnout

2. Compliance exposure (GDPR/MDR, audit-readiness)

3. Delayed patient care → worse outcomes + lost revenue

Hospitals typically throw more staff, more tests, and more money at the problem. But even with multi-billion players in the ecosystem, critical gaps remain.

That’s why we’ve mapped the 2025 Seasonal Surge Playbook — 6 categories, 60 players, and where you should invest your next euro.

The 6 Categories of Surge Readiness

1. Staffing Surges & Workforce Marketplaces

Platforms that scale staff in days, not months:

• Nomad Health, Lantum, CHG Healthcare, AMN Healthcare, Clipboard Health, IntelyCare, connectRN, Nursa, Ingenovis Health, StaffDNA

These reduce staffing shortages but rarely address communication with patients waiting — your real backlog.

2. Home / Remote Care Overflow

Keeps patients out of crowded ERs:

• Cera Care, DispatchHealth, MedArrive, Heal, Cityblock Health, TytoCare, Capsule, Babyscripts, Ready Responders, Doctor Anywhere

Powerful for capacity, but adoption remains fragmented.

3. Rapid Diagnostics & Imaging

Accelerates triage and patient throughput:

• Cue Health, Abbott Rapid Tests, Cepheid, Quidel, LumiraDx, BioFire, Roche Diagnostics, Siemens Healthineers, QuantuMDx, Truvian

Diagnostics cut clinical time but don’t address the waitlist-to-revenue gap.

4. Supply Chain & Logistics Resilience

Critical for ensuring vaccines, PPE, and meds arrive on time:

• GHX, Cardinal Health, Vizient, McKesson, Owens & Minor, AmerisourceBergen, Medline, DHL Life Sciences, UPS Healthcare, HIRC

Prevents shortages but won’t stop overtime bills.

5. Tele-triage & Digital Front Door

Reduces unnecessary hospital visits:

• eConsult, Penda Health, Babylon Health, Teladoc, K Health, Buoy Health, Ada Health, Mediktor, Infermedica, Zava

Great for access, but many lack integration with compliance and ROI visibility.

6. Overtime, Scheduling & Workforce Optimization

The core of cost control:

• QGenda, Kronos (UKG), Shiftboard, Intrigma, Workforce.com, Deputy, Sling, When I Work, TeamBridge, NurseGrid

These tools optimize shifts but stop short of showing € savings avoided.

Where the Gaps Remain

Despite billions invested across these 6 categories, hospitals still lack:

• Fast-fill patient communication packs (to reduce no-shows & cancellations).

• Audit-ready GDPR/MDR binders (templates exportable in minutes).

• Clinical ROI calculators (to quantify OT avoided & slots recovered).

That’s exactly what the Waitlist-to-Revenue ROI Toolkit delivers.

Framework: Surge Readiness Maturity Model

Clinics can assess themselves on a 3-level framework:

1. Reactive → Hire locums, add overtime, absorb cost.

2. Proactive → Use diagnostics, tele-triage, and supply chain tools.

3. Transformative → Add ROI visibility, compliance binders, and patient fast-fill comms (Toolkit level).

Most EU clinics are stuck between Level 1 and 2. Moving to Level 3 can save €50k+ in overtime in one season.

Winter surges aren’t going away. Every October to December, hospitals scramble across staffing, diagnostics, tele-triage, and supply chains. But the overlooked gaps — patient fast-fill comms, ROI visibility, and compliance binders — keep costing clinics €50k+ per season.

That’s why we built the Waitlist-to-Revenue ROI Toolkit.
Plug-and-play in 10 minutes. Savings that last all season.