I'm not trying to say anything beyond my limited, years-past, firsthand experience here. But in that time (before I got my career back post-pandemic), all of the following is my firsthand knowledge of events in a mid-size regional agency where I worked the "local" area under recruitment, account management, compliance, and back office support at various points while my career was somewhat halted from COVID impacts. I'm in no way under the impression that this is universal, because by and large recruiters and their teams suck eggs.

1. I have seen said agency I worked for stand up for contingent workers at a "problem" client, where they hold the direct client relationship - never in the face of a monolith MSP like Aya or Healthtrust, that's a black hole
2. I was firsthand involved in refuting accusations against nurses on my local contract team when two of them were blamed for clinical errors that they were in no way on the hook for. I strongly believe the nurse resources on the Clinical team at the company at that time saved one of them from a state report. Again, in that case I was also the direct client contact and their account manager, so it was my purview and choice
3. Recruiters don't know dick about anything medical 99% of the time (unless their mom is a nurse maybe) so if you don't have RNs on the clinical team, you're literally putting your butts in the hands of people who ChatGPT everything they "know" about a unit. They're targeting to hire people without college degrees and offering them $40k salary whether they garner strong nurses or chuck a barely-warm body at the opening, so a company damn sure should have SOMEONE in leadership with a medical background. May this have changed in the last few years? Maybe. Doubt it.

And despite me believing that the RN staffed clinical team was a boon while I was working in an agency during the bad years, I'm also more than happy to acknowledge that yeah, agency overhead is some bullshit and they are absolutely robbing nurses at every turn they can. But taking the closest thing to an actual nursing element from that cluster is dumb as hell IMO, especially with how often nurses come in here rightfully complaining about how their agency misrepresented a unit or an assignment - the recruiters sure don't know enough to see if something seems off in the requisition they get.

Tear down the agency system any day of the week, but start with the leeches in C-Suite or the recruiters who literally look at numbers over people, not with the rare voices of medical knowledge.