Reimagining how health systems manage labor: Our investment in Vitalize

Coordinating labor in health systems is a notoriously complex and inefficient process. Ensuring the right clinical staff are in the right place to care for the right patient at the right time requires coordination across units and beds, people and labor contracts, clinical expertise, and patient flows. The reality is that clinical managers orchestrate staffing and flow with legacy scheduling software and a toolkit of spreadsheets, sticky notes, deep organizational knowledge, and intuition.

This system works… but only just. Health system margins have been hovering around 1-2% this year as labor accounts for 60% of hospital budgets. Premium labor spend—including overtime, incentive pay and agency nursing—is more than $50B annually. RN turnover stands at 18% nationally. Staffing, including recruitment and retention, is ranked by nurse managers as their top challenge—by a wide margin.

Vitalize was built to transform how health systems manage labor and capacity. The platform unifies staffing, scheduling, flow, and capacity, allowing hospital leaders to predict patient demand, make optimal staffing decisions, and optimize throughput. The technology significantly reduces administrative overhead, lowers premium labor costs, and increases workforce satisfaction.

Our investment In Vitalize
We’re thrilled to share the news of Vitalize’s $31M Series A, led by Oak HC/FT. The company has made spectacular progress since our initial early investment. We’re proud to support Veeraj Shah, Sanketh Andhavarapu, and the whole Vitalize team as they build the future of healthcare labor and capacity operations.

This announcement is special for us because it’s the second time we’ve been lucky enough to work with Veeraj, who was a Rock Health Fellow several years ago before founding Vitalize. We’ve been investing in talent at the frontier of healthcare innovation for a decade and a half. Full-circle moments like these never get old.

Learn more about how Vitalize is transforming how health systems optimize labor, or book a demo.

Rock Health Capital is an early-stage venture fund focused on digital health. We would love to hear from you. Get in touch!