A software provider targeting the workforce shortage in the nursing field raised $45 million in a Series B funding round, building off earlier fundraising with the goal of continuing its expansion over the past 12 months.

The Quincy, Mass.-based IntelyCare provides a platform via app for matching nurses and certified nursing assistants (CNAs) with shifts that post-acute facilities need to fill. The Series B round, which included Kaiser Permanente subsidiary Kaiser Permanente Ventures and Generator Ventures, was led by new investor Endeavour Vision, a private equity investor that focuses on medical technology.

The new funding comes after IntelyCare raised $10.8 million in a Series A funding round led by Leerink Revelation Partners, along with Longmeadow Capital, LRV Health, and former skilled nursing owner and operator Bill Mantzoukas in 2018.

With the latest cash infusion, IntelyCare will focus on investing in advancing its data science. The platform makes use of machine-learning algorithms to determine employee matches and pricing, with the goal of reducing burnout and turnover — and the company has found the data science makes “a significant difference” to both the nurses and the skilled nursing and assisted living facilities that make up IntelyCare’s client base, co-founder and CEO David Coppins told Skilled Nursing News.

“That’s something we had always believed and had always worked with,” Coppins said. “But the last year and a half, it’s proven to be an extremely valuable asset to effectively, truly optimize the workforce and allow that nursing shortage that [facilities] are constantly experiencing to not be a problem … and give our nursing population the opportunity to live their best life.”

IntelyCare was founded three and a half years ago, and has seen significant growth since then, Coppins noted. The company has seen its customer base double from 2018 to 2019, according to the press release announcing the funding round; it now works with about 500 facilities, approximately 80% of which are SNFs, Coppins said.

IntelyCare has seen a similar increase in its workforce. At the beginning of last year, the company started with about 5,000 nurses on the platform; it now has 11,000, Coppins said.

And all of those nurses are employees of the company, he added.

“This is important, because in the gig-economy world, which gets appropriately demonized in some elements, all of our nurses are actually W-2 employees, and they get sick time and other benefits,” Coppins said. “They’re full employees of IntelyCare. Having said that, we give them 100% flexibility about whether they want to work or not work, and where and when.”

The company also plans to use the funds as it keeps expanding geographically. IntelyCare’s presence is strongest in the central and eastern regions of the U.S., Coppins said, but the goal is to grow in those areas as well as establishing a presence in the western part of the country.

Kaiser Permanente Venture’s involvement is expected to be helpful with the latter portion of that goal, he noted.

“They’ve got, obviously, a massive health system, and hospitals and clinics,” Coppins said. “But they also have a lot of SNFs. When they heard about what we were doing, they got really excited about it, because they knew this is something that could really help solve some of the problems they’ve been having.”

The alignment with investors — fellow funder Generator Ventures is “100% focused on companies” bringing technology solutions to the aging population — is something that Coppins emphasized as crucial.

It’s an issue that came to the fore for a different technology company — the SNF-focused telehealth provider Call9, which folded last year despite raising millions to expand its model.

Call9’s founder and CEO said at the time that part of the problem stemmed from the fact that the company’s investors were skittish about the cost of building a value-based platform and pushed for a move into the fee-for-service sector to maximize profits quickly.

That was something IntelyCare wanted to make sure would not be an issue, Coppins said.

“We had many, many different venture firms try to compete for this round,” he told SNN. “And we wanted to not only have funds that could add value to the business, but that there was that harmonious relationship, a true understanding of our vision, and that they shared the same vision.”

In addition to investment in technology and market growth, IntelyCare is focusing part of the new cash injection on developing other solutions that could serve the needs of its existing clients. Though Coppins noted he couldn’t give much detail on these ventures, he said this research and development will remain focused on staffing — but on the needs of the facilities’ own staff, not just their temporary staffing needs.