The connectRN platform was built to find nurses and other health care professionals work, particularly in skilled nursing facilities (SNF).

But over time, workers were asking enough about home health opportunities that the company thought it should get further into home-based care. Serendipitously, Amedisys Inc. (Nasdaq: AMED) came into the picture and partook in connectRN’s $76 million funding round, announced last December.

Since then, connectRN has hired a VP of its home health business in Cora Jaulin, who had worked for over a decade previously in the non-medical home care world with Arosa and HouseWorks. 

And overall, home health growth has become a core focus for the company, one of the key growth areas it plans on driving over the near- and long-term future.

“We are definitely continuing to learn about the needs in the home health space,” Jaulin told Home Health Care News. “There continues to be a shortage of labor. Therefore, it’s sort of perfect timing for us to jump into this space to help our home health partners really think through how to serve up opportunities for a home health clinician, and to continue to deliver on our overall promise to offer choice and opportunity.”

To date, the Waltham, Massachusetts-based connectRN has raised over $95 million in funding. Through a tech-enabled platform and network, its goal is to improve clinicians’ lives by giving them more access, opportunity and support.

In the home health space, learning what access, opportunity and support look like is still something connectRN is learning about every day. Figuring that out will theoretically lead to returns for the company, the workers on its platform and the home health companies it has partnered with. 

“Nothing has surprised me from these [learnings] necessarily, but the quality of the care being delivered is kind of a unique challenge,” Jaulin said. “The problem, as we compare the skilled nursing facility space to the home, is that our clinicians are going one-on-one providing care, and that presents unique challenges. Not only managing the quality of care being delivered, but also in supporting a clinician when she’s the only person in the home.”

Ted Jeanloz, connectRN’s CEO, harped on the fact that connecting “free agent” nurses to each other was always a company goal. But it has been ratcheted up as a focus ever since home health become more of a priority, given that it can often be an isolated job.

“This gives more independent nurses the comfort and safety of a network of people who they trust,” Jeanloz told HHCN. “And we think we can actually deliver an improved experience, and have people prefer to work in this model.”

Dumb enough to ask the right questions

The company has two distinct advantages at this point: it is partnered with one of the most significant players in the entire industry in Amedisys, for one, and is also new enough to the industry that it’s not afraid to ask dumb questions. 

Sometimes those dumb questions from the outside looking in, however, can lead to breakthroughs.

“We come at this from a very product-centric and technology view, and are maybe dumb enough to ask questions like, ‘Why do you do it that way? And, ‘What if we did it this way?’” Jeanloz said. “So we’ve both been able to improve each other’s processes. Because we’re unbiased on how it’s always been done. And they’re able to show us sort of what best-in-class looks like today.”

Gaining access into the best-in-class practices from Amedisys allows the company to get a baseline, but also challenge one of the most authoritative voices in the business. 

The partnership is also, inadvertently, a pretty good advertising tool.

“I think anytime, in any market, when a startup like us gets to partner with a true industry leader, that attracts attention,” Jeanloz said. “It’s certainly been helpful for us in opening doors and building new relationships.”

Moving forward, the company is also working to understand the regulation changes coming to the industry, and how they could aid in the effort from a workforce perspective.

By the end of this year, connectRN hopes to have 2,000 home health clinicians on its platform.

“But that’s just scratching the surface,” Jaulin said.