Staffing Agency Platform ShiftMed Raises $45M, Plans to Grow its SNF Heavy Market

Staffing agency platform ShiftMed has raised $45 million in five months to increase its national footprint, after investors witnessed 400% growth over the past year-and-a-half, the company announced Wednesday.

Funds will expand ShiftMed’s reach to 56 markets across the country. In January, the health care technology company was in 10 markets, according to ShiftMed CEO Todd Walrath.

Walrath expects the funds to last through 2023.

“We’re basically adding one market per week. That’s the advantage of being a technology platform and not having to open up local offices,” added Walrath.

The McLean, Va.-based company currently partners with more than 60,000 credentialed health care professionals, including skilled nursing facilities; its software connects health care professionals with “flexible” nursing jobs, onboarding workers through a credentialing process.

The majority of ShiftMed’s clients, about 65%, are in skilled nursing, Walrath added. Other clients are in the home health or assisted living industries.

ShiftMed has in the past six months had 5,703 SNF nurses work on their platform, the company told Skilled Nursing News.

Those nurses are currently working the equivalent of 15% of the available working hours per year — ShiftMed believes this is driving “meaningful retention and engagement” of health care professionals for the industry as a whole.

ShiftMed hired more than 10,000 nurses this year and its mobile app has received more than 10,000 downloads.

“We recruit in the cloud, we credential in the cloud. We schedule and we pay workers in the cloud, so we’re able to go very quickly when we enter a market,” Walrath said of the company’s platform.

Upwards of 200,000 patients in the third financial quarter received care thanks to ShiftMed partnerships, according to Paul Iaffaldano, general partner at Panoramic Ventures.

The funding round was led by Healthworx, an innovation and investment arm of CareFirst Holdings, as well as Panoramic. Blue Heron Capital, Motley Fool Ventures and 3TS Capital Partners also participated in the round.

“ShiftMed has relationships with more than 700 enterprise partners already, including hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, home health and assisted living providers,” Iaffaldano said in a statement. “Their end-to-end products for health care professionals are extremely compelling, and we are eager to help them with their geographic expansion.”

Walrath said CareFirst “is probably more interested” in building ShiftMed’s at-home capabilities, potentially shifting client makeup.

“It’s always a transition, you know, the people that are going home are coming from somewhere, they’re either coming from the hospital or a SNF. There’s a lot of transitional kinds of care opportunities. I think [CareFirst] understands that,” said Walrath.