Nurse staffing platform Incredible Health got a big boost on Thursday to help it fight healthcare’s workforce shortage — the company closed an $80 million Series B funding round led by Base10 Partners.
The round brings Incredible Health’s total funding to date to $97 million and raises its valuation to $1.65 billion.
Founded in 2017, the company “puts nurses in the driver’s seat,” Iman Abuzeid, Incredible Health’s CEO and co-founder, said in an interview. Hospitals apply directly to nurses, rather than the other way around.
On the platform, hospitals get matched with permanent nurse hires in an average of less than 14 days, compared to the industry average of 82 days, according to Abuzeid. She said an interview request is sent from a healthcare employer to a nurse every 30 seconds.
Abuzeid also claimed that Incredible Health is the only platform that uses automation to help screen nurses’ credentials and employment preferences. The company’s algorithms recognize more than 70 specialties and 250 skills, including specific intensive care unit and operating room skills.
The San Francisco-based startup charges employers for the use of its platform, but nurses use it for free. About 10,000 nurses join Incredible Health every week, Abuzeid declared.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
She added that 600 hospitals use Incredible Health for staffing, including Kaiser Permanente, Stanford Health Care, HCA Healthcare, Providence, Johns Hopkins Medicine, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and NYU Langone Health. Each hospital location that uses the platform saves at least $2 million per year in costs for travel nurses, overtime and human resources, according to Abuzeid.
While Incredible Health indirectly competes with job boards such as Indeed and LinkedIn, Abuzeid claims her company is the only healthcare job matching platform that considers nurses’ credentials and preferences before matching them with an employer. She also said that Incredible Health has an advantage over traditional nurse recruitment agencies that do not use automation software for scale and speed.
The company also differentiates itself from other venture-backed healthcare staffing companies, such as Nomad Health and IntelyCare, because it is focused on filling permanent positions instead of temporary staffing, Abuzeid said.
The company’s funding comes at a critical time — more than 100,00 registered nurses left the workforce in 2021, the worst exodus the profession had seen in more than four decades. Even though this employee deficit is dire, Abuzeid argues “the processes, tools and technology for hiring permanent nurses have not changed in 20 years.” That is what Incredible Health aims to change, she said.
Incredible Health will use the funds it raised to enhance its screening and matching algorithms and expand its services to reach 90% of the country’s nurse workforce, Abuzeid said. The company will also utilize some of the funds to strengthen the professional resources it offers to nurses, including educational scholarships, skills growth courses and relocation support. Abuzeid added that these features make Incredible Health not just a place for nurses to find jobs, but also a place for them to manage their careers.
Going forward, Abuzeid said Incredible Health has plans to extend its staffing capabilities beyond nursing to other types of healthcare workers facing critical staffing shortages, such as home health aids and laboratory technicians. The company also aims to widen its customer base beyond hospitals to surgical centers and urgent care facilities.
Photo: asiseei, Getty Images,
