Nomad Health raises $ 63 million to connect nurses and hospitals

(Bloomberg) – Nomad Health, a digital marketplace that connects nurses to short-term medical jobs, has raised $ 63 million in new equity and debt financing led by Adams Street Partners.

The latest investment values ​​the company at $ 260 million, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. With the latest funding, Nomad Health has raised over $ 100 million since its inception in 2015.

Nomad Health streamlines the process of matching healthcare workers with short-term jobs in the United States. Nurses can create a market profile and fill in their preferences and qualifications. Hospitals use the platform to post job vacancies. The database is searchable, allowing so-called travel nurses to choose jobs based on factors such as location and salary.

“It’s a self-service discovery experience,” said co-founder and CEO Alexi Gharib Nazem.

The emergency of the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated a trend of greater use of technology for healthcare workers, according to an April report from Staffing Industry Analysts. The report predicts that the temporary healthcare workforce segment will grow 7 percent this year to $ 21.3 billion.

Demand for healthcare workers since the start of the pandemic in March 2020 has exacerbated an already existing staff shortage in the United States

“There was an imbalance in the job market and employers had yet to address the issues that made nurses want to retire or go back to school,” said Patricia Pittman, director of the Mullan Institute for Health Workforce Equity at George Washington University. “The factors of Covid overlapped and made a bad situation worse. ”

According to a tool created by the institute, 17% of counties in the United States with intensive care units are in staff crisis. Over the next 30 days, 392 counties will need crisis personnel and 166 counties will need emergency personnel.

Double the staff

Nomad said transactions on its marketplace have increased sevenfold since February 2020 and its revenue has quintupled. This year, turnover to date has more than doubled compared to last year. The company did not quote specific numbers.

With the additional capital, the company plans to double its workforce to more than 160 employees. New hires include Jeff Simon as vice president of products, who was previously product manager at Indeed.com; and Kim Howard, who will serve as Chief Client Officer. Howard was previously Senior Vice President of Strategic Client Sales at AMN Healthcare, the nation’s largest healthcare staffing company.

Thomas Bremner of Adams Street Partners, who manages $ 45 billion in assets and has a long history of investing in companies like VillageMD, Grand Rounds and Lyra Health, joins the board.

“The way this industry worked in the past is you sit there and have no information, and you pick up the phone of an opportunity that is out there, and you start to put together an app,” Bremner said. . The process was time consuming and difficult to scale to meet the demands of the pandemic.

He predicted that demand will be strong even after the pandemic.

“Pre-Covid travel nursing was a $ 4 billion industry and demand was unrelated to Covid,” Bremner said. “There will always be a rapidly aging population, there will always be people living with chronic illnesses and flu seasons, and still too few nurses. “

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