ShiftMed secures $200M round as it eyes M&A

ShiftMed, an app-based nursing job marketplace, closed a $200 million funding round, the company said Monday morning.  

Amid the industry’s nursing shortage, ShiftMed CEO Todd Walrath said he would like to be one of the winners in the growing space of nursing job app companies.  

“There are other pieces out there that are complementary,” Walrath said. “We talk to everybody all the time and we’d love to put the pieces together to be one of the two or three winners on the platform side of things.” 

ShiftMed has more than 350,000 credentialed nurses on its app. While 85% of its revenue comes from its post-acute business, the company hopes to diversify and further grow its acute and in-home service lines with this latest round. Richmond, Virginia-based Panoramic Ventures led the round with support from Blue Heron Capital and Audacious Capital. 

At a time when many companies have experienced down rounds, ShiftMed represents one of the quarter’s largest deals.  

“It took us eight or nine months to get the round completed,” Walrath said. “There aren’t a lot of people who can tell good stories right now.”  

Walrath didn’t expect it to take more than six months but the company had to adapt as macroeconomic factors began to inflict the venture capital markets. He said ShiftMed remains profitable and has experienced consistent growth.  

Despite ShiftMed’s round taking twice as long as Walrath initially expected, he was satisfied with the results and wouldn’t have given up equity if investors asked for too much. 

“We’re profitable, so we didn’t have to do anything,” Walrath said. “We’re trying to be opportunistic because this is the biggest [opportunity] of anything I think I’ve ever seen in business. Providing labor to healthcare is an important function and its very large function that people spend billions and billions of dollars on every year.” 

Nursing app companies are cashing in on the nursing shortage by selling their apps to hospitals and other healthcare organizations. In January, virtual nurse staffing firm ShiftKey raised $300 million in an undisclosed funding round. Nomad Health, a healthcare jobs marketplace, closed a $105 million funding round in June 2022 and Incredible Health, a nurse-hiring online marketplace, raised $80 million in a Series B fundraising round last August.