SnapCare is an AI-enabled workforce marketplace serving the whole continuum of care. Pulse 2.0 interviewed SnapCare co-founder and Chief Operations Officer (COO) Jeff Richards to learn more about the company.
Jeff Richards’ Background
What is Richards’ background? Richards said:
“I am a seasoned healthcare professional who saw a need to deploy healthcare providers more efficiently to medical facilities that needed talented staff quickly. I co-founded SnapCare in 2017 and am passionate about using technology to streamline staffing services and bring more work-life balance to clinical professionals.”
“I have a Bachelor of Science from the University of Florida, a Master of Medical Science from Emory University and most recently an MBA from Kennesaw State University. Prior to co-founding SnapCare, I was the Department Director and Chief Anesthetist at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. I donate my time and expertise on medical missions through work with the Yantalo Peru Foundation and their Global Health Initiative.”
“In my free time I am a competitive triathlete, cyclist, and runner.”
Formation of SnapCare
How did the idea for SnapCare come together? Richards shared:
“Seven years ago, I was at the peak of a successful career as department director and chief anesthetist at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. While earning my MBA, I wrote a paper about how to solve a problem that plagued me as a hospital administrator: how to find qualified, temporary clinical staff quickly and easily. I envisioned a healthcare app that would allow hospitals to search for clinicians with the necessary expertise and help clinicians more easily find shifts and positions.”
“Unbeknownst to me, a former anesthesia school classmate was working on something similar. She contacted me in 2017 for help in launching a new staffing marketplace. At that point, I faced a life-changing decision: whether to leave a successful, stable medical career to risk everything on a bold idea. Though I had never envisioned starting my own company, as a competitive triathlete, I could not back down from a challenge. The opportunity had awakened my inner entrepreneur.”
“I left my hospital job, teamed up with my former classmate and threw myself into developing what would become SnapNurse. After being turned down by multiple institutional investors who liked the idea but were wary of our lack of experience, we launched SnapNurse with a seed round from family and friends. The platform caught on quickly in the Atlanta area and we were on the verge of licensing the software to staffing agencies when Covid-19 struck.”
“Business came to a near halt, then exploded as hospitals desperately sought nurses to meet the demand for caregivers. SnapNurse, which had been designed to place per diem clinicians on demand, had to scale quickly to deliver what was needed in a crisis. However, after spending 19 years on the frontlines in a top trauma hospital, I was unfazed by the pressure and long hours. We adjusted, improvised, and found a way. SnapNurse’s revenue grew 40,000% in two years, enough to earn second place on the 2022 Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies. Revenues jumped to more than $1 billion in 2021 and 2022.”
Core Products
What are SnapCare’s core products and features? Richards explained:
“SnapCare is an AI-enabled workforce marketplace that serves the entire continuum of care. Our platform offers healthcare facilities complete visibility into the ideal talent mix for their unique needs and associated costs. We designed our workforce solutions to significantly improve client savings and efficiencies, minimizing the need for intermediate agencies, returning control to healthcare facilities, and ensuring total transparency in pay and pricing. Our pioneering technology and comprehensive staffing services offer a smarter way for facilities to manage their workforce needs and deliver quality patient care.”
“We are building a world-class, tech-enabled workforce marketplace that serves the full continuum of care and gives healthcare facilities complete visibility into the right mix of talent.”
“The SnapCare platform features:
— Cloud-based, two-sided platform with order submission and tracking – Clients have full visibility into available talent from their platform portal and can submit, track, and optimize their total support needs in one place. Clinicians can apply for posted roles, upload and manage their credentials, and build professional profiles to find the best opportunities for their needs and skills.
— Internal workforce resource management – Clients can post shifts and select from a pool of internal team members. The AI-enabled platform does the rest, making it easy for clinicians to choose and schedule open shifts and for clients to fill their current needs. In a fast-to-follow release, the platform will allow shift posting for SnapCare’s 380,000-plus clinicians.”
“SnapCare offers six wrap-around services:
— Permanent placement recruiting
— Internal workforce resource management
— PRN staffing
— Contract local/travel staffing
— Managed service provider
— Talent acquisition services”
Challenges Faced
What challenges have Richards and the team faced in building the company? Richards acknowledged:
“Most first-time entrepreneurs fail. But I helped guide SnapCare through trials that would have been the end for most young companies: overcoming a lack of private equity, inventing a way to pay nurses daily, scaling up in the face of a pandemic, and more. Rapid growth can be as dangerous to a startup as slow growth because it forces a company to sprint while it’s still learning to walk. Though I was a novice entrepreneur, I have found that the unflappability I acquired as a trauma anesthetist and the focus and stamina from triathlon training serve me well in the fast-moving and competitive world of healthcare technology.”
“For all the hyperbole surrounding entrepreneurship, relatively few companies truly change their industries. SnapCare is the exception. We have modernized and transformed healthcare staffing, a vital industry long encumbered by a lack of technology, inefficiencies, high markups, and client mistrust of agencies.”
Evolution of SnapCare’s Technology
How has SnapCare’s technology evolved since launching? Richards noted:
“In fall 2023, SnapNurse relaunched as SnapCare to provide a new service model and serve additional types of clinicians; in addition to nurses, we now serve providers, psychologists, pharmacists, physical therapists, etc. The new platform has been well received by the healthcare industry as it addresses pain points head-on.”
“For years, nurses and other clinicians have been reluctant to sign on with staffing agencies because of difficulties getting paid promptly. Payments from staffing agencies often are slow and reduced by agency fees, causing clinicians to feel they are being taken advantage of. Payments also are not always digitally integrated with clinicians’ own accounts, which requires workers to perform additional functions and, sometimes, incur extra fees to access their hard-earned funds. This has the overall effect of discouraging clinicians from taking temporary assignments through agencies, which is harmful to healthcare staffing and delivery.”
“SnapCare fixed this problem through its development of SnapCare’s Paymint, a daily pay platform that makes it easy for clinicians to be paid immediately, access 100% of eligible wages at no cost to them, and take control of their finances. SnapCare developed its own payment system because existing ones charged clinicians too much and did not offer them end-of-shift pay.”
“Since we began offering Paymint, we have seen an increase in clinician retention and recruitment. More than 135,000 clinicians were added in the last 24 months alone. SnapCare now has 380,000-plus clinicians on roster available to take on assignments. Feedback from users has been overwhelmingly positive. We developed Paymint as part of our commitment to providing a new model of workforce management, one that is better for clinicians and for the healthcare organizations that hire them.”
“In Q1-2024, SnapCare acquired Medecipher, a cloud-based predictive analytics staffing decision support tool, to further deliver facility control, low cost, and transparent solutions across the continuum of care.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Richards cited:
“In October 2023, SnapNurse relaunched as SnapCare™ and introduced a wave of innovative workforce solutions that give healthcare organizations unprecedented control over workforce management.”
“The name change reflects our commitment to caring for a broader range of clinicians and clients by growing our technology platform to further reduce healthcare costs and improve ease of use. That commitment will be backed by a nearly 300% increase in technology investments.”
“As healthcare organizations struggle with rising staffing costs, we are focused on putting the needs of healthcare facilities and their clinicians first – which means prioritizing internal workforce and PRN needs so that these facilities can minimize the traditional role and costs associated with agency middlemen. Our platform provides a smarter and lower-cost way for facilities to manage their workforce needs, control costs, and help facilities deliver quality patient care. This is the heart of our “more tech, right touch” promise.”
“Clients can expect to save up to 15% on core staffing services. When they utilize the full suite of our technology and analytics offerings, savings are likely to exceed 20% compared to what competitors charge for the same services.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Richards assessed:
“Public company reports indicate TAM for the US healthcare staffing industry, inclusive of permanent placements, to be north of $40 billion. However, it has become a highly distributed market so TAM is getting bigger.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Richards affirmed:
“SnapCare is the first among technology companies in the healthcare workforce management field to transparently detail our costs and charges on invoices. Traditionally, staffing agencies have invoiced clients without disclosing clinician pay rates, benefit and travel costs, and markups.”
“As part of our Transparent Pricing Promise, except where clients have differing requirements, we disclose:
— Pay rates
— Travel costs for clinicians, with no markup on air travel or stipends
— A standard burden rate on the pay rate to cover clinician benefits and payroll taxes, again without markup.”
”The remainder of the bill represents our fees for recruiting, credentialing, and employing clinicians. This pricing approach is less expensive for clients than the industry standard practice of bundling all costs and marking up the entire amount.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Richards concluded:
“As we have always done, SnapCare will continue to invest in new capabilities to serve clinicians and clients. For example, we will be involved in reskilling nurses, helping them to acquire new skills and certifications that will allow them to work in different care environments and at different levels. We will also provide scholarships for nurses through the SnapCare Foundation.”
“Of course, the nursing and clinician shortage is not limited to the United States. Virtually every country in the world has similar problems. In fact, countries routinely recruit caregivers from each other, a practice that does nothing to solve the shortage. Our model could work elsewhere with adaptations to manage a global workforce.”
