Intelligent nurse staffing company IntelyCare raises $115M

With this new funding, the company is now valued at $1.1 billion

There has been a looming nursing shortage in the US for a while now: according to the American Hospital Association, more than half of nurses were age 50 or older back in 2017, and almost 30% were age 60 and older. The issue was only exacerbated by the pandemic, which caused many healthcare professionals to retire or quit; now the data is showing that the US is set to lose half a million nurses by the end of this year, which will bring the shortage to 1.1 million.

It's in this environment that IntelyCare is thriving: the company helps solve the shortage crisis by giving nurses the flexibility of being a gig worker, meaning they can pick up extra shifts and augment their income when it’s convenient for them. It uses artificial intelligence to schedule and match nursing professionals with open assignments, while also giving the healthcare organizations more control over their staffing.

IntelyCare's solution has caught on with both nurses and healthcare facilities, and with investors as well: on Wednesday, the company announced a $115 million Series C funding round led by Janus Henderson Investors, along with Longitude Capital, Leeds Illuminate, Endeavour Vision, Revelation Partners, and Kaiser Permanente Ventures. With this new funding, IntelyCare is now valued at $1.1 billion.

Founded in 2015, IntelyCare partners with post-acute facilities which can range in both size and specialty; they include skilled nursing facilities, long-term care, and assisted living. 

The facilities post available shifts which are viewable by company's tens of thousands nurses, who get to choose how much, how often, when, and where they want to work. The company's AI incorporates dozens of data elements, and more than 600,000 observations, such as past behavior, time or day of shift, medical specialties and certifications, geography, pay rates, and familiarity with a facility, to present nurses with the shifts they’re most likely to accept. The wages that nurses earn through IntelyCare are dynamically priced based on the ease or difficulty of filling a shift.

The nurses on the platform, known as IntelyPros, are employees of IntelyCare, who pays their payrolls taxes and worker's comp, and liability insurance. The nurses also have benefits and a 401k.  

By using IntelyCare, nurses can see their pay rise as much as 20% by using IntelyCare; for the healthcare facilities, because its algorithms can detect when certain shifts are harder to fill, and can add a flash bonus to incentivize nurses to take them, the company is able to fill 70 percent to 80 percent of shifts, compared to around 25 percent of shifts that are filled by a traditional agency. 

Since IntelyCare raised it's $45 million Series B in February of 2020, its annual revenue has grown by more than 850%. The number of IntelyPros more than doubled in 2021, while the company saw client demand almost triple. IntelyCare now has over 30,000 nurses working at over 1,600 facilities across the country.

This new funding will be used to expand into new states, while also investing in its AI-based platform and data science technology. IntelyCare also provides nurses with educational training to make sure its nurses and CNAs have the most current and relevant content, and the company plans to go deeper into that area going forward as well.

(Image source: intelycare.com)