Accelerated by the pandemic, a local startup is pivoting its focus and looking to grow its team alongside the increasing demand for health care professionals in many parts of the country.
With grant money through the McKinney Economic Development Corporation’s Innovation Fund, LocuMatch, a software platform that connects health care workers with hospitals and other medical facilities, is moving its headquarters from Health Wildcatters to the city with plans to hire to accommodate its expansion.
Financial terms were not disclosed.
“We’re working on tying in technology with nursing… it’s a pretty pivotal time for us to push it and get the word out,” Mohammad Badar, founder and CEO at LocuMatch, told NTX Inno.
Coming into 2020, LocuMatch was largely focused on placing locum doctors, essentially freelance doctors, with health institutions. However, the pandemic hit and contracts and commitments began to dry up.
“We’ve just been trying to ride out the wave a little bit,” Badar said. “It was a little tough but now that’s starting to turn around.”
Now, the startup is focusing much of its energy where the highest demand in the health care industry is right now – travel nurses. Badar said it was a sector of the industry the company had been planning on entering in the future but initial plans were to launch that side of the business sometime next year. Now, LocuMatch has doubled down on those efforts and is planning on being able to begin placing nurses where they are most needed by Q2 of next year.
“The biggest need is with nurses. ICUs are swamped and they need extra covers, and on top of that nurses and staff are getting COVID and having to find quick replacements for that,” Badar said. “A lot of hospitals, even a lot of surgery centers that don’t typically even deal with the space, are having to desperately starting exploring options.”
The company is still working with locum doctors. However, it is currently focused on creating a network of travel nurses to bring to health care facilities. LocuMatch is even offering referral incentives to build out the network more quickly. To begin with, LocuMatch plans to offer a flat rate for nurses, then move to a commission-based model.
“Now it’s gotten to the point where hospitals are like, ‘We really need nurses,’ and we’d be kind of stupid not to take that dive, take the opportunity that’s primed right now,” Badar said.
While it builds out the nursing side of its platform, LocuMatch expects to need new hires. Aided by grant funding from the McKinney EDC, the company is planning to move its HQ to the city by the end of the month or early January. The company had originally planned to make the move last month but those plans were put on hold while it waits for a vacancy in the building it’s eyeing to come up.
As it grows more in the industry, Badar said the company will likely need to add between five to 10 people, most in sales and marketing, to its three-person team. Like with its locum doctors, the company will focus on placing nurses across DFW and Texas before looking nationwide.
“We were always really interested in the nursing space, one of the largest parts of the sector, but we kind of wanted to grow our base within physicians first just to prove our model,” Badar said. “We’re looking to roll with it now, just with the demand.”
