What is ANSOS staff scheduling?

ANSOS, historically ANSOS One-Staff, is enterprise nurse and staff scheduling software for hospitals: staffing-office scheduling, acuity-integrated forecasting, work rules, and a Web Scheduler front end nurses use for self-scheduling. It passed from McKesson to Change Healthcare and has been owned by HealthStream since December 2020.

Is ANSOS being discontinued?

No formal end-of-life date has been published, so we will not claim one. What is on the record, from HealthStream's Q1 2025 earnings call and its own case studies: it is not selling legacy products to new customers, ShiftWizard's revenue has overtaken ANSOS, and ANSOS organisations, including a 45-hospital system, are being migrated to ShiftWizard.

What is ANSOS Web Scheduler?

The web front end where staff do self-scheduling against the ANSOS schedule: viewing shifts, requesting and filling them. It is the page most nurses mean when they search for ANSOS, usually with a hospital-specific login URL.

What does ANSOS cost?

HealthStream does not publish ANSOS pricing, and since it is not being sold to new customers the question is largely moot. MedAligna costs $99, $149 or $249 per month per location, published, with a 14-day trial and no card.

What is a good ANSOS alternative?

It depends on your scale. A health system replacing ANSOS everywhere will shortlist enterprise platforms, including HealthStream's own ShiftWizard. A department, facility or agency that needs the clinical rules without the implementation project is the buyer MedAligna was built for: credential blocking, exclusion screening, ratios with acuity, rest and overtime, at a published price.

When should I stay on ANSOS?

While it is working and nothing forces the timing: a fluent staffing office running a stable deployment is not a problem to solve this week. The honest caveat is that the clock is the vendor's now, so the evaluation you are postponing is one you will eventually do on someone else's schedule.

How do I migrate off ANSOS?

Export your staff and schedule to CSV, import both into MedAligna, restate your rules once, and build next month while ANSOS runs the current one. A single facility can do the import and setup in an afternoon; the parallel month is where the confidence comes from.

Comparison · verified July 2026

ANSOS alternatives, because the question is no longer optional

ANSOS, historically ANSOS One-Staff, is enterprise nurse and staff scheduling software for hospitals, owned by HealthStream since 2020 after years under McKesson and Change Healthcare. It remains deeply installed, but HealthStream has said it is not selling it to new customers and is migrating existing ones to its newer ShiftWizard product.

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From $99/month per location · No sales call · No card to start

At a glance

ANSOS earned its installed base: at acquisition in 2020 it ran scheduling in over 300 hospitals and health systems, with acuity-integrated forecasting and complex work rules (HealthStream announcement, November 2020).
It is now openly the legacy product. On HealthStream's Q1 2025 earnings call the company said it is not selling legacy products to new customers, and its own case studies describe migrating ANSOS organisations to ShiftWizard.
The staff experience has aged with it: the ANSOS2Go mobile app rates 2.0 out of 5 from 70 App Store ratings and was last updated in February 2021 (checked July 2026).
There is no published pricing and no trial; historically it was bought as an enterprise implementation, and today a new buyer largely cannot buy it at all.
MedAligna publishes its price ($99–$249 per location per month), trials self-serve in 14 days, and enforces the rules on every assignment rather than after the fact.

What ANSOS genuinely got right

ANSOS is one of the original serious answers to hospital nurse scheduling, and its installed base is the proof: over 300 hospitals and health systems at the 2020 acquisition, many of them large, complex, unionised environments that break lesser tools. Its staffing-office model, acuity-integrated forecasting and complex work rules were built against exactly those environments.

The Web Scheduler front end also gave nurses self-scheduling years before most of the category, and plenty of staffing offices are still fluent in it. A tool that has run a 45-hospital system's scheduling is not a toy, and nothing below pretends otherwise.

Where the road actually ends

The largest gap is not a feature; it is the roadmap. HealthStream, which has owned ANSOS since 2020, told investors on its Q1 2025 earnings call that it is not selling legacy products to new customers, and its published case studies describe moving ANSOS organisations, including one 45-hospital system, onto ShiftWizard. There is no formal end-of-life date, and we will not invent one. But a product that cannot be newly bought and is being actively migrated away from by its own vendor answers the alternatives question for you.

The day-to-day gap is the phone. ANSOS2Go rates 2.0 out of 5 across 70 App Store ratings and was last updated in February 2021, five years stale as of July 2026. Staff who cannot usably see, swap and claim shifts from a phone route around the system, and the schedule of record quietly stops being the schedule.

If you are being migrated anyway, the switching cost is already spent

The strongest reason to stay on any incumbent is the cost of moving. ANSOS customers are being asked to pay that cost regardless, to ShiftWizard on the vendor's path or to something else on yours. Once a migration is inevitable, the honest comparison is between destinations, not between moving and not moving.

What the public documentation does not say

HealthStream's current ANSOS pages describe acuity-integrated forecasting, work rules and credential requirements for shifts. We could not find public documentation of licence expiry blocking an assignment, federal exclusion screening, or a CMS PBJ export. If those rules are yours to answer for, ask any destination vendor, us included, to demonstrate them live before you commit.

Which one is right for you

The unusual thing about this comparison is that the vendor has already made half the argument. The question is not whether to leave ANSOS eventually; it is where to land, and when.

Stay with ANSOS if…

You are a large hospital or health system with a working ANSOS deployment and no pressure this budget cycle.
Your acuity and staffing-office workflows are built around it and the people running it are fluent.
You plan to evaluate the vendor's own migration path to ShiftWizard on the vendor's timetable.

Look at MedAligna if…

You are a department, facility or agency that could never buy ANSOS anyway, and now nobody can.
You want credential expiry to block an assignment, exclusion screening on every roster, and rules checked before publish.
Your staff judge the tool by the app on their phone, and 2021 was a long time ago.
You want a published price and a working schedule this month, not a migration project.

MedAligna vs ANSOS, row by row

Binary, verifiable facts only. No adjectives; an opinion is not a comparison.

Capability	MedAligna	ANSOS
Sold to new customers	Yes	No, per vendor (2025)
Hospital staffing-office deployment at system scale	No	Yes
Acuity-informed staffing	Yes	Yes
Web self-scheduling for staff	Yes	Yes
Staff mobile app updated within the last year	Yes	Last update Feb 2021
Blocks a shift when a licence has expired	Yes	Not publicly documented
Federal exclusion (OIG) screening	Yes	Not publicly documented
CMS Payroll-Based Journal (PBJ) export	Yes	Not publicly documented
Self-serve: sign up and publish today	Yes	No
Free trial without a sales call	14 days, no card	No
Published pricing	$99–249/mo per location	Not published

ANSOS is a trademark of its owner. MedAligna is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by ANSOS. Comparison compiled from publicly available documentation and pricing pages, verified July 2026. If anything here is out of date or wrong, tell us and we will correct it.

The honest bit

You should probably stay on ANSOS for now if…

Even a sunsetting product can be the right thing to be running this quarter.

The deployment works, the staffing office is fluent, and nothing is forcing the timing.
Your organisation intends to evaluate ShiftWizard on HealthStream's migration path, and that evaluation deserves to happen properly.
You are mid-contract and the exit maths do not work yet.
The scale of your rostering problem is genuinely a health system's, in which case your shortlist is enterprise platforms, not us.

We would rather you stayed and told someone we were straight with you than switched and regretted it. This category is small, and reputations travel.

If you are moving on your own terms

01
Export people and assignments
A staff CSV and a schedule CSV are enough to start: MedAligna imports people and assignments, creating any missing shifts. Rows the rules refuse come back with reasons, which for a facility leaving a legacy system is usually the most interesting report of the week.
02
Bring the rules, not just the roster
Credential requirements, minimum rest, overtime caps, ratio rules. State them once in MedAligna and every future schedule and swap is checked against them before publish.
03
Run one period in parallel
Build next month in MedAligna while ANSOS runs the current one. Compare the two, then cut over. A migration you were pushed into deserves at least one calm month of overlap.

ANSOS questions, answered

What is ANSOS staff scheduling?: ANSOS, historically ANSOS One-Staff, is enterprise nurse and staff scheduling software for hospitals: staffing-office scheduling, acuity-integrated forecasting, work rules, and a Web Scheduler front end nurses use for self-scheduling. It passed from McKesson to Change Healthcare and has been owned by HealthStream since December 2020.
Is ANSOS being discontinued?: No formal end-of-life date has been published, so we will not claim one. What is on the record, from HealthStream's Q1 2025 earnings call and its own case studies: it is not selling legacy products to new customers, ShiftWizard's revenue has overtaken ANSOS, and ANSOS organisations, including a 45-hospital system, are being migrated to ShiftWizard.
What is ANSOS Web Scheduler?: The web front end where staff do self-scheduling against the ANSOS schedule: viewing shifts, requesting and filling them. It is the page most nurses mean when they search for ANSOS, usually with a hospital-specific login URL.
What does ANSOS cost?: HealthStream does not publish ANSOS pricing, and since it is not being sold to new customers the question is largely moot. MedAligna costs $99, $149 or $249 per month per location, published, with a 14-day trial and no card.
What is a good ANSOS alternative?: It depends on your scale. A health system replacing ANSOS everywhere will shortlist enterprise platforms, including HealthStream's own ShiftWizard. A department, facility or agency that needs the clinical rules without the implementation project is the buyer MedAligna was built for: credential blocking, exclusion screening, ratios with acuity, rest and overtime, at a published price.
When should I stay on ANSOS?: While it is working and nothing forces the timing: a fluent staffing office running a stable deployment is not a problem to solve this week. The honest caveat is that the clock is the vendor's now, so the evaluation you are postponing is one you will eventually do on someone else's schedule.
How do I migrate off ANSOS?: Export your staff and schedule to CSV, import both into MedAligna, restate your rules once, and build next month while ANSOS runs the current one. A single facility can do the import and setup in an afternoon; the parallel month is where the confidence comes from.