Nursing staffing platform Amazing health got a big boost Thursday to help fight the health care workforce shortage — the company closed $80 million Series B funding round led by Base10 partners.
The round brings Incredible Health’s total funding to date to $97 million and raises its valuation to $1.65 billion.
Founded in 2017, the company “puts nurses in the driver’s seat,” Iman Abuzeid, CEO and co-founder of Incredible Health, said in an interview. Hospitals apply directly to nurses, not the other way around.
On the platform, hospitals get permanent nurse hires in less than 14 days on average, compared to the industry average of 82 days, according to Abuzeid. She said an interview request is sent from a healthcare employer to a nurse every 30 seconds.
Abuzeid also claims that Incredible Health is the only platform that uses automation to help verify nurses’ credentials and job preferences. The company’s algorithms recognize more than 70 specialties and 250 skills, including skills for specific intensive care units and operating rooms.
The San Francisco-based startup charges employers to use its platform, but nurses use it for free. About 10,000 nurses join Incredible Health each week, Abuzeid said.
She added that 600 hospitals use Incredible Health for staffing, including Kaiser Permanente, Stanford Health Care, HCA Healthcare, Providence, Johns Hopkins Medicine, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and NYU Langone Health. Each hospital site that uses the platform saves at least $2 million a year in nursing, overtime and HR costs, according to Abuzeid.
Although Incredible Health indirectly competes with job boards like Indeed and LinkedIn, Abuzeid says her company is the only healthcare job search platform that takes nurses’ credentials and preferences into account before connecting them with an employer. She also said Incredible Health has an advantage over traditional nurse recruiting agencies that don’t use automation software for scale and speed.
The company also differentiates itself from other venture-backed healthcare firms such as Nomad Health and IntelyCareas it focuses on filling permanent positions instead of temporary staff, Abuzeid said.
The company’s funding comes at a critical time – more than 100,00 registered nurses left the workforce in 2021, the profession’s worst exodus in more than four decades. While this staffing shortage is dire, Abuzeid argues that “the processes, tools and technology for hiring permanent nurses have not changed in 20 years.” That’s what Incredible Health aims to change, she said.
Incredible Health will use the funds it raised to improve its screening and matching algorithms and expand its services to reach 90 percent of the country’s nursing workforce, Abuzeid said. The company will also use some of the funds to strengthen the professional resources it offers nurses, including educational scholarships, upskilling courses and relocation support. Abuzeid added that these features make Incredible Health not only a place for nurses to find work, but also a place for them to manage their careers.
Going forward, Abuzeid said Incredible Health has plans to expand its staffing options beyond nurses to include other types of healthcare workers facing critical staffing shortages, such as home health aides and lab technicians. The company also aims to expand its customer base beyond hospitals to surgery centers and urgent care facilities.
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