Title: Co-founder and chief nursing officer
Residence: Bourne
Age: 37
Education: Bachelors of science in biology, UMass Dartmouth, 2007; associate in science of nursing, Roxbury Community College, 2010; masters in science of nursing, family nurse practitioner, Frontier Nursing University, 2015
IntelyCare, a tech-enabled health care staffing company, has been racking up accolades for its growth since its founding in 2016.
The Boston Business Journal recognized IntelyCare for its rapid growth in 2020, naming it the private company in Massachusetts that showed the largest three-year revenue growth from 2016 to 2019. Earlier this year, IntelyCare hit “unicorn” status after a $115 million fundraise boosted its valuation to more than $1 billion.
Chris Caulfield, chief nursing officer and co-founder of the Quincy-based company, said its success has stemmed from giving nursing professionals the flexibility to build a schedule and career that meets their needs. IntelyCare uses machine learning-powered software that puts nurses and nursing assistants in touch with health care facilities that are looking to fill shifts.
The company’s growth has continued throughout the pandemic, Caulfield said. In March 2020, IntelyCare reported that it had 11,000 nursing professionals in its network. Caulfield said that number has now grown to more than 30,000 RNs, LPNs and CNAs across 28 states.
The Class of 2021 40 under 40 honoree spoke to the BBJ recently about his evolving role at the company, life after hitting unicorn status and future goals.
What does it mean to be a ‘chief nursing officer’? For many years I was responsible for clinical compliance, some of the credentialing and clinical education and development. But I’d say over the past year, I’ve actually transitioned to helping lead the new market team, so market expansion.
How does that impact your day-to-day work? Every week I’m pretty much in a new state, usually two to three days a week now, which is a big change for me. I’ve mostly been in the office for the last six years prior. Now it’s getting out there and really setting up a series of small events and talking with nurses, having engagement events. It’s something that we’ve really taken initiative to really give back to the nurses that work for us, because oftentimes they feel like they’re under-appreciated and working in traditional settings where they kind of get cold pizza and that’s the prize of the day.
Burnout among nursing professionals skyrocketed during the pandemic. How can IntelyCare help with that? We have many, many nurses that otherwise have really started leaving the industry and they’ve been coming back because of those opportunities. Many of the nurses, whether they’re going to school or they have young children or they’re retiring just because — it’s so taxing, on their bodies working so much on the units and taking care of so many patients. So what we’ve developed over these years is this on-demand technology that really lets them be flexible and we’re bringing a lot of nurses and nursing assistants back into the workforce.
When you co-founded the company in 2016, did you ever think you’d become a unicorn? We were starting the company and I think there was a handful of us, and I went to the store and I found these little ceramic unicorns and I gave them to all the founders and I said, ‘One day we’re going to be a unicorn.’ And I was almost joking. And then it actually comes true.
So what happened to the ceramic unicorn? I’ve had to glue it back together. The horn fell off a couple times. I have a version of it, let’s say.
What does reaching this milestone say about IntelyCare? It shows the need out there to have a solution that really improves the work-life balance of nurses. It’s a needed technology that really helps.
IntelyCare is working on new technology to help facilities manage their own employees. Can you say more? We’ve been building technology for facilities to run their own per-diem pools so they have that on-demand technology connecting to their workforce to allow that flexibility. In the past, they’ve been using phone calls, emails, voicemails, texts. It just doesn’t deliver at the level of the mobile app technologies that we’re all used to using.
In what other ways is IntelyCare branching out into new areas? We’ve been working on expansions into other areas of post-acute care including filling shifts for home health and hospice companies. That’s really where care is evolving. We’ve seen Covid has started to push more investment into the home health side of the business. So, we’re evolving our technology and have begun the process of beta testing our apps in that spectrum.
