Online healthcare jobs marketplace Nomad Health has locked up $63 million in new equity and debt financing.
The raise, announced Tuesday, was led by Adams Street Partners and included all of the company’s prior investors.
Nomad has now raised more than $100 million since its 2015 founding, a “strong majority” of which is equity, a representative said. The company declined to share the breakdown of equity and debt for this week’s raise.
“It's clear that Nomad Health has built the best technology to efficiently and effectively connect healthcare workers with jobs and there has never been a more important time for this service,” said Thomas Bremner, a growth equity partner at Adams Street Partners and now a member of Nomad’s board, in a statement. “I look forward to working with the leadership team and the company as it continues to experience tremendous growth.”
Nomad’s platform allows clinicians to search, filter and apply to temporary local and travel positions.
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Nurses and other clinicians who apply are hired on as W-2 employees rather than contract workers, allowing Nomad to offer benefits and licensing and certification reimbursement for certain jobs. For healthcare facilities posting open positions, Nomad says on its website that the platform delivers a 5% reduction in contract spend and a 95% assignment completion rate.
As COVID-19 and other stressors put the squeeze on healthcare staffing, Nomad has seen its business grow. The company said that it’s had a sevenfold increase in marketplace transactions and a fivefold rise in revenue since February 2020. This year’s revenue to date has already more than doubled 2020’s entire take in, company executives said.
As of its $34 million funding round in August 2019, Nomad had roughly 50 corporate employees and was highlighting plans to grow its team. The company said it now has 170 corporate employees working under the Nomad banner.
“Our work has never felt more important or more rewarding,” said Alexi Gharib Nazem, M.D., CEO and co-founder, in a statement. “Since the beginning of the pandemic, Nomad has been able to move at lightning speed to connect clinicians with hospitals that desperately need staff. In that time, Nomad has sent clinicians to take care of over one million patients in all 50 states. We are truly fulfilling our mission of removing the obstacles between providers and their patients.”
The company said in the announcement that its new funds would support hiring efforts and growth of its nationwide footprint. The money will fuel new investments into the Nomad platform, an area that Nazem said is a primary focus as competing digital healthcare staffing tools—Trusted, Incredible Health and Aya Healthcare, to name a few—rise in prominence.
“While there are so many new avenues of growth that this funding will help us explore, we are doubling down on our investments in the platform to support what we expect will be even more rapid growth as we take greater share and as the demand for healthcare staffing continues to accelerate,” he said. “We firmly believe that honing our leadership within the category will drive tremendous opportunity for the company.”
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Icon Ventures, Polaris Partners, RRE Ventures, .406 Ventures, First Round Capital and Silicon Valley Bank also joined Adams Street Partners in the raise.
Coinciding with the funding announcement was news of two executive hires at the startup.
Kim Howard, formerly senior vice president of strategic client sales at healthcare staffing company AMN Healthcare, will be taking the reins as Nomad’s chief client officer. Jeff Simon, who was previously the head of product at Indeed.com, will be stepping in as vice president of product.
“Kim and Jeff are both deeply experienced and respected leaders in the staffing and workforce industry,” Nazem said. “Each brings best of breed skillsets to Nomad that will help us expand with greater velocity and continue to introduce meaningful innovation to the world of healthcare staffing. Both are known for defining and realizing the future of the workforce sector, and I could not be more excited to have them help Nomad write the future of healthcare staffing.”
Nomad’s business is addressing and benefitting from an industrywide staffing shortage that has left hospitals and other care providers increasingly reliant on temporary and travel workers.
National groups have called on the Department of Health and Human Services to declare a national nurse staffing crisis and prioritize policies that support workforce well-being, retention and long-term stability. In the meantime, many hospitals and health systems such as Providence say they have ramped up their hiring efforts and benefits offerings to prevent understaffing.