Says its offices have been open 24 hours a day for more than six years

If a hospital needs extra nurses in the middle of the night because of an emergency, it may uses the services of companies like Mayday Healthcare.

The company prides itself on its ability to find temporary health professionals at the last minute for out-of-hours work in NHS and private hospitals. Indeed, the London company claims that its main office on Buckingham Palace Road has not been closed for a single hour in more than six years, with 22 staff working the night shift, and 20% of its business coming from placing people in out-of-hours work.

Mayday was co-founded at the end of 2003 by Nick Poturicich and Charles Safapour, with funds for the venture put up by Kevin Coyle, who owns 100% of the company. Coyle owns five other recruitment firms and, together with finance director Denis Harrington, brings three decades of recruitment experience to the business.

Poturicich and Safapour were university friends who had worked together at another healthcare recruitment company. Safapour’s other experience as a prison officer initially helped the company achieve the status of approved provider of medical staff for prisons in Britain. It says it is now the biggest recruiter of temporary nurses to the prison sector.

Mayday also provides specialist staff for nursing homes and for organisations that deal with mental health and learning disabilities. It hopes to expand into dental surgeries.

It will recruit for permanent positions but most of its jobs are temporary and nursing is still its biggest sector, although the company has recently expanded into providing doctors as well as non-medical staff for hospitals. It has a bank of about 3,000 nurses, doctors and support workers who are all individually vetted. The recruiter has traditionally operated in southern England but these days its network is nationwide.

Mayday hopes to increase its share of NHS recruitment and the company became an approved supplier of agency staff to the NHS under the National Agency Nursing Framework Agreement in October. This lasts for three years with an optional fourth year. Mayday has also recently won contracts to provide agency staff nationwide for two of the largest private hospital organisations, Spire Healthcare and BMI Healthcare, and has plans to open four to six new offices this year.

The business has proved resilient during the economic downturn, and sales nearly doubled to £56.2m in the 12 months to the end of September 2009, while profits have swelled 167% a year from £512,000 in 2006 to £9.7m in 2009. It has 90 staff.

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