With healthcare's staffing crisis expected to continue to worsen, startups like Vivian Health are stepping up to help healthcare organizations tackle staffing shortages.
The startup raised $60 million in funding led by private equity firm Thoma Bravo for its healthcare jobs marketplace, the company announced Wednesday.
While many staffing platforms focus on matching clinicians with open shifts at healthcare facilities, Vivian Health helps employers fill various types of openings including permanent jobs, local contracts and travel positions in addition to open shifts.
More than 700,000 clinicians have registered to use Vivian's marketplace, according to the startup.
“Vivian is the healthcare industry’s first-ever candidate-centric jobs platform built with clinicians’ needs in mind—offering the widest selection of job opportunities and features like Vivian’s Universal Profile, transparency across pay and benefits, employer reviews, and a one-click apply experience—and as a result we’re able to drive organic engagement with clinicians at an unrivaled scale,” said Vivian Health co-founder and CEO Parth Bhakta in a statement. “This has been key to our growth and our ability to help employers fill open positions quickly and cost effectively.”
The company said it facilitates 15% of all travel nursing placements in the U.S.
Holding company IAC, which acquired Vivian in 2019, and Collaborative Fund also participated in the funding round.
San Francisco-based Vivian will use the fresh capital to accelerate its growth as it eyes potential M&A opportunities.
“Temporary labor and shiftwork in the U.S. is still mostly a manual process, ripe for disruption, and IAC is investing in the bold ideas and ambitious leaders ready to transform how Americans find quality, sustainable work,” said Mark Stein, executive vice president and chief strategy officer at IAC. “Parth and his team at Vivian are building a next-generation jobs platform that clinicians love, and healthcare employers depend on to fill open positions—this is Vivian’s moment.”
Healthcare organizations across the country are struggling as clinicians resign in droves, searching for better benefits and pay at other organizations or leaving the field altogether due to burnout.
Those sources of dissatisfaction prompted a full-blown crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic as thousands of healthcare facilities were overrun with patients.
In a March survey by Incredible Health, more than a third of nurses said it's very likely they will leave their roles by the end of the year.
Some providers have banded together to demand improved conditions for healthcare workers.
Monday, roughly 5,000 nurses from Stanford Health and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital held a strike for stronger wages, benefits and staffing, despite Stanford's decision to withdraw health benefits from employees who participated.
Similar protests have erupted in recent months across the country, including at Sutter Health and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.