Nurse Staffing Firm IntelyCare Gains $115 Million in Series C Funds

The tech-enabled nurse staffing firm IntelyCare has secured $115 million in a Series C investment round, bringing the company’s total value to $1.1 billion. The dollar amount of these investments signals continued growth for the contract clinician space as health care providers contend with industry-wide labor shortages.

The infusion of capital, led by Janus Henderson Investors, will allow the Quincy, Massachusetts-based firm to expand its footprint and further develop its artificial intelligence platform. Through the AI application, IntelyCare schedules and matches nurses with openings in health care organizations across the continuum.

Other investors in the round included Longitude Capital, Leeds Illuminate, Endeavour Vision, Revelation Partners, and Kaiser Permanente Ventures.

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IntelyCare has expanded rapidly since CEO David Coppins and Chief Nursing Officer Chris Caulfield founded the company in 2016.

“Both recruitment and retention continue to trend up for us. We’ve more than doubled the number of nursing professionals in 2021, while client demand for IntelyPros almost tripled from the previous year,” Chris Sands, CFO of IntelyCare, told Hospice News in an email. “IntelyCare plans to build on this momentum by using the new funding to expand its footprint to new states and invest heavily in its AI-based platform and data science technology.”

Currently the staffing firm has dispatched close to 30,000 nurses, or “IntelyPros,” to more than 1,600 health care organizations in the United States. 

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The company’s Feb. 2020 Series B round brought in $45 million, led by the venture capital firm Endeavour Vision. Since then, IntelyCare’s annual revenues have increased in excess of 850%, the company reported.

The “gig economy” nature of staffing company jobs has proven attractive to nurses as those positions tend to offer higher wages and more flexible scheduling than many full-time health care employers.

Flexible scheduling and improved work/life balance are becoming more crucial to recruitment and retention throughout the health care sector, including the hospice industry, in which more than 60% of clinicians reported that they had experienced burnout even before the pandemic. 

“One of the lasting legacies of COVID on the health care workforce will be a massive adoption of gig work that empowers these essential workers to do the work they love, but in a way that gives them control over their lives and mental well-being that they’ve never experienced,” Sands said. “Health care workers have seen the future, and they like it.”

IntelyCare’s nurses are W-2 employees that receive benefits including health care, retirement and education, among others. Historically, health care workers had greater access to such benefits through full-time employers and thus were more wary of contract work, but that pendulum is starting to swing.

A portion of the Series C funds will support further hiring and continuing education opportunities for IntelyCare’s clinicians.

While staffing services have enabled hospice providers to maintain continuity of care during the pandemic, labor costs have risen substantially as a result. Consequently, a number of hospice companies have signaled that they will dial back utilization of contract nursing services as infection rates recede.

Nevertheless, evidence suggests that contract labor utilization is unlikely to return to pre-pandemic levels. The staff shortage was a top concern for hospice leaders longer before COVID struck and is unlikely to disappear if and when the outbreak subsides.

“The fundamental demand drivers for nurses that existed even before COVID (i.e., nurse population demographics) have been boosted by the lingering effects of the pandemic on the profession and are likely to boost demand for temp staffing post-2022 and keep bill rates significantly elevated relative to pre-COVID going forward,” Brian Tanquilut, equity analyst for Jeffries Financial Group, wrote in a research note.

This will likely be a double-edged sword for hospice providers. While they will have access to the additional human resources that staffing companies offer, they will also be competing with these companies for new hires.

These were among the factors that led home health and hospice giant Amedisys (NASDAQ: AMED) to invest an undisclosed amount in a Series F round for the nurse staffing agency connectRN earlier this year.

Amedisys is currently working with its new asset to develop its home health- and hospice-specific capabilities to capitalize on contract nursing market growth and bolster its own workforce.

As with Amedisys, these tailwinds have whetted the appetites of investment firms.

“As an early investor in IntelyCare, we saw the potential for how this technology could transform health care labor markets,” said Bernard Vogel, managing partner at Endeavour Vision in a press release. “This new funding round comes as that vision is becoming a reality. As care settings become increasingly distributed, it is clear that health care organizations will rely on technology to flexibly meet their staffing needs.”

Soon the technology that IntelyCare brings to market will extend beyond its contract nursing business. A portion of the Series C funds will support the launch of new products designed to help health care employers optimize management and efficiency of their full-time, part-time, and float pool staff, Coppins told Hospice News.

Currently, more than 90% of IntelyCare’s current clients are skilled nursing facilities, long-term care, and assisted living facilities. The company began moving into the home-based care space during the first quarter of this year and expects to grow in that market.

“Care at home is an increasingly important aspect of health care delivery, and it will be a huge driver of delivering quality outcomes and keeping costs down in the future as the demand for care grows with an aging population,” Sands said. “IntelyCare is launching its home health efforts this year and this [Series C] investment will support those initiatives.”

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