When the pandemic hit in March, it was a do-or-die moment for SnapNurse, CEO Cherie Kloss said.
Like many other companies, the medical staffing platform had to pivot. The only other option was failure.
That pivot not only saved SnapNurse, but also sparked a year of explosive growth, Kloss said. She saw 10 years of business development crammed into six months. Revenue grew 9,900%. Employees went from 20 to 120. The annual recurring revenue grew from $2.4 million to more than $200 million.
Kloss has no plans to slow down. SnapNurse raised $15 million from Pivotal Group, and that funding will be used to triple the company’s employees, Kloss said. She predicts SnapNurse will see $500 million in revenue in 2021.
SnapNurse, founded in 2017, is a platform that allows health-care facilities access to on-demand nurses and other health-care professionals. Nurses sign on to SnapNurse, which vets their certifications and keeps data regarding their specialties. When a hospital needs a nurse, it requests one through SnapNurse, which sets up the shift and pays the nurse through the platform.
SnapNurse went from providing five to 10 nurses to a health-care facility for an elective surgery to deploying 500-1,000 nurses across 25 facilities for a rapid COVID-19 response.
“It’s not only about being a nurse staffing agency,” Kloss said. “It’s an ability to see where the needs are and fish in the right pond. You have to be able to pivot as fast as you can.”
After the drop in elective surgeries, which was one of SnapNurse’s primary markets, Kloss and her team focused on helping with the pandemic. She said they kept up with the news to find out where nurses were needed most and worked with hospitals in those areas.
About 50,000 nurses are on the SnapNurse platform, about 90% of whom are Black, Kloss said.
“They’re the ones holding a hand when that person is dying or holding Zoom calls with family members to say goodbye,” Kloss said. “These nurses are the true heroes of the COVID response. I’m really proud to be part of a company that represents the African-American community so well.”
With the rapid-response model, Kloss said the platform helps facilitate nurses to pick up shifts that start in 24-72 hours across the country. SnapNurse leans on the platform’s technology to keep up with demand, moving toward more automated ways to send nurses to these shifts.
Kloss said she expects demand for nurses fighting COVID-19 to continue for about the next two years. After the pandemic, she said SnapNurse will keep the connections it made with health-care facilities around the country, which will sustain its growth.
Kloss said she hopes SnapNurse becomes the “Amazon of health-care staffing.” She plans to grow the platform into a marketplace that can also accommodate doctors and streamline the process for on-demand and rapid-response nurses.
