Why Define chose to Partner with Laudio

Define Ventures
3 min readJun 8, 2023

We are thrilled to announce our partnership with Laudio to tackle the #1 issue facing health systems today: Labor Productivity & Burnout. Laudio is an integrated workflow management system for frontline health system managers that improves efficiency, reduces burnout & improves outcomes.

Define Ventures led Laudio’s B round with participation from .406, InHealth Ventures, Memorial Care, Teletracking and Memorial Hermann.

Michael Dowling, the CEO of Northwell, said “We must find ways to increase productivity and reduce labor costs in order to survive.” The American Nurses Association reports that 62% of nurses in the US are experiencing burnout. This number spiked during Covid but continues even as the pandemic has subsided. In addition to increased levels of stress, anxiety & depression among nurses, clinical burnout is directly associated with communication breakdown, medical errors, and negative patient outcomes. The causes of clinical burnout are many, but the leading causes include high workload demands, lack of support, staffing shortages and moral injury (experiences that contradict an individual’s personal or shared values or expectations). For patients and health systems alike, the systemic effects are striking. In a letter to Congress in March of 2022, the American Hospital Association stated:

“Hospitals’ operating margins are still below pre-pandemic levels, driven in large part by the massive growth in expenses…Of particular note is the growth in labor expenses, which have grown nearly 13% on an absolute basis and 19.1% on a per patient basis.”

Laudio is the leading workflow management system designed specifically to support health system frontline leaders to work smarter, more efficiently and better. The Laudio platform has been honored by KLAS in its 2022 Emerging Solutions Top 20 Report as one of the top solutions with the greatest potential to disrupt the healthcare market. Laudio is partnered with leading health systems around the country, including Novant Health and UNC Health. It improves workforce satisfaction, reduces burnout and improves productivity. And unlike staffing solutions aimed at adding more people, it helps retain the talent a healthcare organization has already recruited, invested in, trained. Laudio has developed a suite of proprietary algorithms and intelligent workflows that integrates disparate data, streamlines collaborative workflows and prompts intelligent next best actions for every aspect of frontline care from housekeeping to nurse managers in the ICU.

Laudio is led by Russ Richmond, CEO & co-founder, a physician by training and an evangelist of better care through better tools by disposition. He began his career after medical school at McKinsey and then went on to build & lead companies such as D2Hawkeye, Verisk, Advanced Practice Strategies and Objective Health. Laudio’s senior team and co-founders, CJ Floros, Tim Darling & Mridul Ganesh are all senior healthcare & technology leaders who have led multiple successful companies all dedicated to improving healthcare & outcomes.

“In each conversation with Define, we were impressed by their depth of understanding and their commitment to patient care and the healthcare workforce who deliver that care. Together we’re excited to help make life better for healthcare workers and patients with human centered tools that make work better, easier and more rewarding.” — Russ Richmond, Co-Founder & CEO

We could not be more excited to play a part in Laudio’s continued success as they redefine how healthcare provider organizations manage and optimize their workforce.

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