Prior to COVID-19, labor had already reached over half of a hospital’s total expenses. Between full-time employees, nurse travel contracts, and agency fees, hospitals use several different recruitment channels to overcome today’s nursing shortage and still meet changing staffing demands.
Healthcare professionals have found work through these same channels but had no easy, quick way to pick up extra shifts at other facilities in their area. Will Patterson, CareRev’s founder and CEO, was one of them. Patterson decided to launch CareRev to solve his problem and problems faced by thousands of other healthcare professionals.
With his experience as a trauma nurse, Patterson created CareRev in 2015 with the goal of connecting hospitals and healthcare professionals through a mobile app and, ultimately, transforming the traditional healthcare workforce model. The platform helps hospitals reduce labor costs, particularly offsetting expensive travel contracts, and gives professionals a more intuitive way to pick up shifts: on their phones. CareRev is a Los Angeles, California-based health tech startup and a labor marketplace platform that connects hospitals and health systems with local healthcare professionals on-demand.
Today, CareRev announced it has closed a $50 million Series A financing round to scale its technology solution to meet the growing demand for a more flexible, resilient healthcare workforce. The round was led by Transformation Capital, a growth equity fund solely focused on innovative healthcare IT and services companies.
Founded six years ago, CareRev is an online technology platform where Hospitals and Outpatient facilities can directly access per diem medical staff. CareRev offers a cloud-based platform in which hospitals and other healthcare facilities post shifts when they need clinical support, and local, vetted healthcare professionals claim the shifts through their mobile app — eliminating the need for a traditional agency.
Unlike other healthcare labor marketplace platforms, CareRev offers health systems the technology to create their own hybrid marketplaces in which internal employees are given the option to claim shifts before they’re broadcasted to local, external CareRev professionals.
Today, the industry’s long-standing challenge of providing high-quality care while controlling costs has been exacerbated by the pandemic. Hospitals nationwide were forced to adapt quickly with the help of technology. “When the pandemic hit, we were ready to help both hospitals and healthcare professionals through the uncertainty. The flexibility of our solution allowed for accelerated adoption when it was most needed,” said Patterson. “Our vision is to build a more resilient post-COVID workforce in which health systems can tap into a latent supply of local, flexible healthcare professionals when they need them, and professionals are empowered to work where and when they want.”
CareRev’s growing list of clients includes over 30 hospitals and health systems, including SSM Health in St. Louis, MO, and Froedtert Health in Milwaukee, WI, and more than 500 outpatient centers. SSM Health’s VP of Transformation, Grandon Brimley, says, “With CareRev’s dedication to streamlining onboarding and getting qualified healthcare professionals in the door faster, we now feel confident about reducing our reliance on costly long-term travel contracts while leveraging our local community of qualified professionals.” Today, more than 11,000 registered nurses (RNs), certified nursing assistants (CNAs), medical assistants (MAs), and surgical and radiologic technicians use CareRev to find flexible work.
With the new funding, CareRev plans to invest in scaling their product and operations, including incorporating more AI and machine learning, to achieve greater market impact. “We’re excited to increase the momentum and continue building technology that reduces the challenges of traditional healthcare staffing,” Patterson said. “We’ve already seen 20 percent month-over-month growth since April of last year, doubled our revenue in the past six months, and in Q4 alone doubled the amount of healthcare professionals using our mobile app. The demand for flexible staffing is through the roof.”
“As the country’s nursing shortage becomes more acute and regulatory staffing mandates shift, health systems need innovative staffing solutions — and COVID-19 has only exacerbated the problem,” said Jared Kesselheim, MD, Managing Partner at Transformation Capital. “CareRev’s scalable, differentiated approach — including intuitive technology for the two-sided marketplace — has showed us that the traditional, expensive and resource-intensive staffing agencies are a thing of the past. CareRev takes the stress off of the health systems looking to hire and the providers looking for autonomous, flexible work.”