Deal Radar 2008: ShiftWise

Our coverage of health care IT continues with Oregon-based ShiftWise, an SaaS health care solutions company. Founded in 2003, the company was formed when co-founder Jason Lander recognized the tremendous inefficiencies that existed in the then-manual process of managing temporary nurses. He created an automated process that helped hospitals and other health care providers find and book supplemental health care workers more easily.

Delivered as Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions, ShiftWise applications automate the entire life cycle of contingent or flexible workers. ShiftWise differentiates itself from its competition by combining targeted applications and professional services to focus on both vendor management and float pool automation. The company has two pricing models, one for its Vendor Management Solution (VMS) and another for its Internal Resource Pool (IRP) functionality. In VMS, ShiftWise facilitates the billing and invoicing process on behalf of suppliers and hospitals by automating time collection, approval and invoicing. It creates a reverse invoicing process in which the hospital creates the invoice and then pays suppliers through a ShiftWise escrow bank for distribution to the suppliers. ShiftWise in turn retains a pass-through fee prior to distributing the payables to the suppliers. For the IRP application, the company’s IRP customers pay a monthly charge for management of their internal staff.

The company is focused on the health care market including hospitals, long-term care facilities and health care clinics, and its top segment of interest is the hospital market. ShiftWise estimates that the health care staffing market is approximately $11-$13 billion spread across 6,000 hospitals, long-term care facilities and other care providers.

ShiftWise has experienced between two and three times y-o-y growth since its beta year in 2004. The number of customers has also grown steadily, from 50 in 2005 to 700 in 2008. Customers include the University of North Carolina Medical Center (UNC), Resurrection Health Care, St. John’s Medical Center, and High Desert Medical Center. ShiftWise also has partnership agreements in place with nine state hospital associations and several key staffing firms, who use ShiftWise software in their master vendor programs. According to CNNMoney, the company did almost $8.5 million in 2006. ShiftWise did not disclose any revenue information but did say that it is now both cash flow positive and profitable.

ShiftWise has raised a total of $8 million in funding though curiously, it has never divulged its list of investors. The company is currently funding its growth through internally generated cash and at this time does not plan to raise additional capital from outside investors.

Related Readings:
*Deal Radar 2008: ClickCare
*Vision India 2020: Doctor For Sure
*Forbes Column: Healing Health Care

This segment is a part in the series : Deal Radar 2008