Algorithms Won’t Replace Nurses, But $15M Says They Can Help Hire Them

Incredible Health, a startup that developing a hiring platform for nurses, has raised a $15 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).

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NFX, Obvious Ventures, GingerBread Capital, Precursor Ventures, and others also participated in the round. The two-year-old company raised a $2 million seed led by Obvious Ventures in 2017. NFX and Precursor Ventures put money in its seed round as well as the most recent funding event.

Dr. Iman Abuzeid came up with the idea for Incredible Health after hearing repeated complaints from friends and family members who were doctors and surgeons about understaffing, “and not having enough health care workers, especially nurses, to take care of patients.”

The trained physician and co-founder Rome Portlock (an MIT alum who comes from a family of nurses) set about creating a marketplace for hospitals and health systems to connect to qualified nurses looking for work. Abuzeid cites statistics indicating that by 2024, the U.S. is poised to have a shortage of one million nurses.

The marketplace launched about 18 months ago in California, where the company says it’s already profitable. It uses “proprietary algorithm-based tech” to match hospitals with nurses for permanent jobs.

“By automating the screening and custom matching process, hospitals and health systems can hire permanent nurses in less than 30 days,” she told Crunchbase News. “This is a process that normally takes 90 days or more with the inefficiencies of traditional hospital hiring practices.”

Today, over 150 hospitals in the state are using Incredible Health, including Stanford Health Care, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, CommonSpirit Health, Tenet and HCA, among others. The startup currently has 34 employees compared to about five a year ago, according to Abuzeid, and will use the new capital to expand nationally and to add other health care workers to its platform.

David Jones, Stanford Health Care’s chief human resources officer, says using Incredible Health has led to the institution “consistently” hiring for permanent roles in under three weeks.

Other investors in the latest round include Matt Mickiewicz, founder of Hired, a software engineer career marketplace; Steve Goodman, co-founder of Bright.com (acquired by LinkedIn); and Pete Kazanjy, founder of TalentBin (acquired by Monster).

Photo courtesy of Incredible Health