Clipboard Health, which matches health workers with facilities, raises $80M – TechCrunch

Clipboard Well being, an app-based market that matches nurses with open shifts at close by healthcare services, at the moment introduced that it raised $80 million over two unannounced rounds, a $50 million Sequence B spherical in 2021 and a $30 million Sequence C spherical this yr, at a $1.3 billion valuation post-money. CEO Wei Deng says that the proceeds might be put towards hiring in all areas of the enterprise, together with in engineering, gross sales, advertising and marketing.

Brief-staffed well being services symbolize a long-term downside that the pandemic has made extra acute. Since March 2020, the variety of individuals working at U.S. hospitals declined by greater than 2%, based on information from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, whereas emergency division wait occasions elevated. A current evaluation of workforce information by Premier discovered that staffing shortages price hospitals $24 billion through the pandemic.

Along with worse take care of sufferers and spiraling prices for directors, short-staffed services result in burnout amongst healthcare professionals. A 2021 Kaiser Household Basis/Washington Publish ballot discovered that about 3 in 10 healthcare employees thought of leaving the occupation whereas about 6 in 10 mentioned pandemic-related stress had harmed their psychological well being.

“It’s a suggestions loop that’s amplifying itself, as a result of the extra healthcare professionals depart the sector, the sooner those that stay are prone to burn out from their elevated workload,” Deng advised TechCrunch in an e-mail interview. “The one approach to change this damaging pattern is to radically improve the variety of healthcare professionals with curiosity in and entry to alternatives at hospitals and nursing properties. To do this, you may’t depend on previous strategies. These are the instruments that received’t repair the present downside.”

Clipboard Well being’s staffing dashboard.

A instrument that may — she considerably biasedly believes, being its founder — is Clipboard, an internet market that pairs nurses, nursing assistants and different healthcare professionals with services in want of staffing. Utilizing the platform, services can publish shifts they should fill and healthcare employees can ebook these shifts, managing their schedules by way of Clipboard’s cellular app

Presently serving employees in additional than 30 U.S. cities, together with Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago and New York, the objective is to carry Clipboard to “many extra” areas by the top of the yr, Deng says. “What we’re doing is permitting healthcare professionals to enroll in shifts when and the place they need, typically at services the place they’ve by no means labored earlier than, and leverage their latent hours in the event that they select to. So hospitals and nursing properties are tapping a a lot deeper pool of healthcare expertise and, on the similar time, healthcare professionals are seeing much more alternatives,” she added.

App-based market

Deng based Clipboard six years in the past, after stints as an affiliate at legislation agency Davis Polk & Wardwell and funding financial institution Moelis & Firm. Additionally previous to Clipboard, she led product administration and enterprise operations at Sendwave, a world cash switch startup.

“I began in search of prospects with financial issues that we may attempt to resolve, or damaged markets that we may work in direction of fixing,” Deng mentioned. “In the middle of assembly quite a lot of potential prospects, I noticed how lots of the healthcare professionals I talked to — what number of nurses — needed alternatives to do the work they liked on their very own phrases, with extra flexibility. Finally we realized that the marketplace for healthcare expertise was damaged. You have got healthcare services, like hospitals and nursing properties, which can be chronically short-staffed. You have got healthcare professionals, like nurses and authorized nursing assistants, who’re getting overworked and burned out, particularly throughout COVID. And you’ve got sufferers who’re slipping by the cracks, as a result of they will’t get the care they want.”

Clipboard is a two-sided market, counting over a thousand healthcare services and tens of hundreds of pros as prospects. Moreover incumbent staffing companies, Deng acknowledges that there are a number of startups with enterprise fashions much like Clipboard’s, like NurseDash, CareRev and Nomad Well being, which focuses on journey nurses. However she notes the distinguishing options of Clipboard’s platform, like immediate cost after shifts.

“[W]hat [the] software program does nicely [is] lowers obstacles to info. On this case, the data is about who wants shifts to be crammed, and who’s keen to fill them,” Deng mentioned. “American society is growing older. The nation will want increasingly nurses. However U.S. can’t even meet its wants for caregiving now. How are we going to do it in 5 to 10 years, when the demand is larger and the availability is decrease? We predict expertise marketplaces like ours are a key a part of the answer … Our platform provides [new and veteran professionals] entry to alternatives and adaptability {that a} single full-time job couldn’t present.”

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Helen Poitevin, Gartner analysis VP, advised TechCrunch by way of e-mail: “As soon as dominated by brick-and-mortar staffing companies, new digital staffing platforms are rising for shift or job-based versatile work in industries similar to hospitality, retail, logistics, journey and healthcare. Will they survive? We’ve already seen some, like Shiftgig, pivot. Others, like Jyve, look like out of enterprise. Identical to at the moment’s gig platforms, these new digital staffing platforms must construct strong matching and optimization know-how in addition to sturdy manufacturers to draw each staff and employers. The very best will use know-how to make versatile employment compliant, high-trust, sooner, simpler and a greater expertise for all involved. On this case, employers may even wish to use them for their very own staff along with short-term employees. Different platforms will merely be like conventional staffing companies with a digital front-end — much less disruptive and extra simply replicated by those self same conventional staffing companies.”

Some specialists imagine {that a} reliance on contract nursing, which frequently instructions larger salaries in comparison with employees positions, is resulting in a vicious well being care hiring cycle. Hospital directors spend extra hiring contractors, making them much less in a position or keen to extend their employees nurses’ pay — so extra employees nurses stop to turn out to be contract nurses.

However Deng pushes again in opposition to the notion, arguing that Clipboard “let[s] the 2 sides of the market select one another.” In different phrases, well being care services will pay beneath market charges in the event that they discover a nurse keen to take the shift.

“It’s very easy and easy for our prospects, and that’s how we expect it ought to work for everyone,” she continued.

Progress alternatives

Underlining the urge for food for startups like Clipboard, enterprise capitalists within the U.S. invested $37.9 billion into digital well being startups in 2021, up 75% from $21.7 billion in 2020, based on CB Insights.

The Clipboard cellular app.

Clipboard, driving the wave, plans to make use of the info that its platform generates (e.g., how healthcare services supply expertise) to glean insights into the broader healthcare market. “[We have a] information science staff that helps our market, gross sales, assist and advertising and marketing groups, and we’re doing our greatest to make good matches that meet the wants of services and caregivers,” she continued. “[W]e’re throwing all the pieces we will on the downside, together with machine studying, as a result of we expect it’s necessary and it’ll have an effect on quite a lot of lives.”

Clipboard’s gross income elevated by roughly 25 occasions within the final 18 months, and the most recent funding brings the corporate’s whole capital raised to $90 million. That, Deng says, needs to be enough runway to construct out new groups to assist the corporate’s rising enterprise.

“[The pandemic] brought about huge stress on the system, and the healthcare workforce hasn’t recovered but. Fewer individuals work in hospitals now than they did proper earlier than the pandemic hit. Which means healthcare services are nonetheless scrambling to search out caregivers to fill shifts,” Deng mentioned. “Our prospects have been on the heart of the storm, and I’d prefer to assume that our product made it simpler for sufferers to get higher care, and altered quite a lot of lives. I hope we’re getting nearer to being out of the woods. However the deeper, power traits behind the shortfall of healthcare expertise stay.”

Clipboard’s newest spherical was led by Sequoia Capital whereas the Sequence B was led by IVP. Different traders embrace Y Combinator, Caffeinated Capital, Initialized Capital and SciFi VC.