As hospital systems nationwide face financial shortfalls and staffing shortages, Madison-area virtual nursing startup Nurse Disrupted recently raised $1.5 million to expand its services to inpatient hospitals.
Nurse Disrupted provides hardware, software and technical support services to help health providers offer virtual nursing. The startup says implementing its products can help hospital systems save millions of dollars on outsourced agency nurses by enabling staff nurses to work some shifts from home.
"What we're doing is reducing nursing turnover by offering more flexible shifts, a little bit of physical respite by being able to do some virtual nursing shifts from home and to recharge nurses for their bedside shifts," Nurse Disrupted CEO and co-founder Bre Loughlin said.
Nurse Disrupted is piloting its solution with providers such as Bon Secours Southside Medical Center, a 300-bed hospital near Richmond, Virginia.
The startup began in 2020 by providing virtual nursing solutions to homeless shelters, rural health clinics and other community organizations. It has several customers in that area.
But as Nurse Disrupted was working with hospitals' population health arms to implement its solutions, hospital executives couldn't stop talking about the nursing shortage and asked for Nurse Disrupted's help, Loughlin said.
"The big, hot, burning fire is the nursing staffing crisis," Loughlin said, noting that around a quarter of nurses are leaving the profession. "It's just crushing hospitals and it's crushing nurses."
Hospitals nationwide, including in Wisconsin, face major financial challenges as increased wages have outpaced revenue. Nurses make up the majority of hospital staff, according to Loughlin. As nurses leave the workforce due to burnout, hospitals turn to expensive agency nurses.
The startup recently raised a $1.5 million second seed round led by HealthX Ventures in Madison to help fund its expansion into the inpatient industry. Other investors included Milwaukee Venture Partners and investors that backed the startup's first seed round in 2021.
Nurse Disrupted previously raised $700,000 from investors including Exact Sciences Corp. CEO Kevin Conroy and HealthX Ventures founder and managing partner Mark Bakken, who invested as an individual at the time. The latest capital brings Nurse Disrupted's total funding amount to $2.2 million.
The startup currently has a team of six people, said Loughlin, who formerly was a bedside nurse and was later a nursing innovation and product lead at Epic Systems Corp.
"I've been gearing up my entire career to transform nursing in this way," Loughlin said.
