Long before Covid-19, health care workers experienced high levels of burnout. The pandemic, however, accelerated the burnout crisis, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy wrote in a 2022 report, resulting in turnover and labor shortages.
Resignations in the health care industry have increased from about 400,000 a month in 2020 to approximately 600,000 a month in May 2023, according to a September McKinsey & Company report. As of May 2023, the U.S. had 710,000 vacant health care positions, per the report.
Centennial-based Keel aims to address these issues and raised $500,000 to do so.
Keel is an employee upskilling and professional development coaching startup. It pairs individuals and teams with coaches to provide training and skills development. This can include improving communication, understanding how an organization’s work and mission align with an individual’s core values or coaching first-time managers through difficult conversations.
“Strong cultures, strong teams and investment in individual professional development matter as healthcare organizations look to address issues like burnout, turnover and labor shortages,” said Steve Theesfeld, founder and CEO of Keel. “With Keel, we want to work with, and within, the health care organization in support of their goals. We also believe that working on the individual and team level offers tighter feedback loops on how we can provide deeper and wider value at individual, team, organizational and systemic levels as time goes on.”
Rather than focusing on one kind of health care worker, Keel works with all industry employees, from therapists and physicians to nurses, executives and more. This holistic approach is what sets Keel apart from other platforms working to address health care’s workforce shortage and burnout levels, Allyson Plosko, a principal at SpringTime Ventures and recent Keel investor, said in an email.
Keel’s $500,000 raise comes as a pre-seed round co-led by SpringTime and Matchstick.
Theesfeld said the capital will help the startup bring on new customers and build out its tech. The funds will also help Keel prove its hypothesis that coaching and upskilling can help reduce turnover in the industry.
“We believe the health care workforce deserves to achieve its highest potential,” Theesfeld said. “The way that translates into mission is that we’re here to stabilize and strengthen that workforce and the focus is on professional development, coaching and upskilling.”
Providing upskilling and professional development coaching for health care employees — a group that doesn’t typically have access to these types of services, according to Theesfeld — can result in financial savings for employers. Annual burnout-related turnover is estimated to cost the industry billions — $9 million for nurses and up to $6.3 billion for physicians alone, per the U.S. Surgeon General’s 2022 report.
“Health care is a complex adaptive system,” Theesfeld said. “We chose to focus on the individual and team levels because we believe that coaching to build skills, strength, connection and performance at this level of the system will have a broader positive impact on the organization.”
Keel is currently working with SOAR Autism Center in Colorado on group and individual coaching. Theesfeld said he and his three-person team are building Keel based on customer feedback. A future tech-enabled platform may include digital resources for employees and first-time managers and easier access to a coach. For now, Keel matches employees — be it individuals or groups — with a qualified coach.
Theesfeld, who first began working in health care in the early 2000s as a caregiver at a senior living facility, came up with the idea for Keel in 2022. After years of speaking with friends who are doctors and nurses, he set a Google alert to track physician burnout. Over time, he saw a need to support health care workers and address industry burnout.
He founded Keel in March 2023.
This isn’t Theesfeld’s first startup. In 2012, he also co-founded Dallas-based Cariloop, an employer-sponsored caregiver platform. Theesfeld still serves on Cariloop’s board of directors and works on Keel full time.
Plosko said Theesfeld’s experience as a previous founder is invaluable and will help him make “meaningful progress” on Keel in a short time.
“Our belief in the CEO, combined with Keel’s innovative model, solidified our conviction that Keel has the potential to increase clinician satisfaction and wellbeing, ultimately leading to a reduction in turnover and an improvement in the overall patient experience,” Plosko added.
