Trusted Inc., a startup focused on connecting nurses and other healthcare professionals with potential employers, raised $149 million in funding that will help the company to develop a new workforce management platform called “Works.”
The funding was led by a $94 million Series C investment from Greenspring Associates, the venture firm which was recently acquired by StepStone Group Inc. this September. A previously unannounced $55 million Series B funding led by Craft Ventures and Felicis Ventures is also included in this press release.
The company also raised $20 million in 2019, led by Craft Ventures, and joined by previous investors Felicis Ventures and Founder Collective. This, together with preceding rounds of funding, brings the company's total funding to $175 million since its inception in 2017.
Connecting Nurses With Suitable Positions
The San Francisco-based startup will use these freshly injected funds to accelerate the development of a new platform called “Works,” which allows hospitals to create their own on-demand workforces, including contract labor and internal float pools. According to Trusted, the technology is already up and operating at the healthcare system Mercy, assisting them in "increasing the fill rates" and "decreasing their premium labor expense."
Trusted specializes in travel nurses who work in hospitals or clinics for short periods, but it also employs nurses in roles such as home healthcare and long-term care.
Nurses can construct a profile with their qualifications and certificates using Trusted's software platform, and Trusted will then utilize algorithms to connect them with suitable positions.
When Trusted finds a job match, the hospital reimburses Trusted, which then reimburses the nurses. Trusted makes money by charging a fee for each transaction.
Lennie Sliwinski, CEO and Co-founder of Trusted said, “We’ve been left with a fragmented ecosystem of apps and services for healthcare institutions trying to solve one problem: matching the right clinician to the right role in the most efficient manner, through a combination of technology and close working relationships with organizations like Mercy, we’ve built a platform that is going to help hospitals meet staffing challenges head on so they can keep their focus on delivering quality patient care.”
He also stated that the company isn't profitable yet, and is currently focusing on spending money to accelerate its research and development. The pandemic has greatly accelerated the adoption and growth of their technology. He added, “Even with the latest wave waning across the country, we continue to see a record number of jobs posted by employers every week, indicative of growing demand for healthcare services more broadly."
Felicis Ventures general partner Niki Pezeshki said the demand for Trusted's services during the pandemic had no bearing on his firm's decision to invest because the startup will assist tackle problems in healthcare that existed before the crisis.
The Competition
SnapNurse, a rival healthcare staffing platform, has seen a similar uptick in fortunes as they recently reported revenue of $350 million in Q1 and are on course to generate more than $1.5 billion by the end of the year. In the last year, their number of internal staff has increased from 20 to 200. The company claims to be able to place health workers in as little as 24 to 48 hours, as opposed to the normal 11 to 14 days.
The same goes for another publicly traded competitor, AMN Healthcare Services Inc. (NYSE: AMN), whose revenue increased by 59.1% year over year in the third quarter. This is a staggering growth when compared to their low single-digit increases in the previous years.
As the pandemic is slowly coming to a close and the demand for nurses by specialization is in pre-pandemic levels, it will be interesting to see how Trusted, and its competitors in the healthcare staffing sector navigate this period.
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