Dear Doctor, We Heard You: Reflecting on Silversheet Being Acquired by a Multi-Billion Dollar Public Healthcare Company
It was the morning of January 30th, 2019
My partner Miles Beckett and I were sitting in our conference room waiting to hear the news, as we spent our last couple minutes as a private company. We were about to be acquired by AMN Healthcare, a Multi-Billion Dollar Public Company and leader in Healthcare Staffing and Workforce Solutions. Minutes later we received confirmation that the deal had closed. We had done it. A win for Digital Health in Los Angeles, a win for our amazing team of VC Investors, including Summation Health Ventures, Upfront Ventures, Slow Ventures, Rincon Ventures, Act One Ventures, SV Angel, BAM Ventures and The Cedars-Sinai/Techstars Accelerator… but more importantly a win for providers across the country.
For Miles, this was his second exit, 2-for-2, an incredible feat for one of the greatest entrepreneurs I have ever encountered. As a physician turned technologist with a passion to improve the provider experience and reduce physician burnout, his story resonated with investors and clients because he could understand both sides of the equation. Curiosity and the desire to solve problems for the people around us is what fueled Miles to build this company, and I am so grateful for having been a part of the ride. Having spent the majority of my professional career in healthcare as an operator, investor and advisor to some of the largest startups in healthcare, I had built a genuine network that I was able to leverage to help Silversheet blossom. For me this was my first exit, a day I will always remember for the enormous sense of validation I felt that a small tech company on Sawtelle Boulevard could make a real difference in improving our nation’s healthcare system.
In just a few short years, Silversheet, a cloud-based credentialing and privileging SaaS platform had become the fastest growing provider data management solution in the country powering over 500 facilities nationwide. Joining the AMN Healthcare family is such an amazing fit for us, as its scale and resources further drive our vision to reduce physician burnout and help with the shortage of clinicians in this country.
The Provider at Heart
Siversheet was built with the idea that there has been little innovation in the way providers interact with facilities. Silversheets’ mission was simple, but the task was enormous, create a cloud-based digital network that allows providers to be portable, share their credentialing information with any facility in the country and finally free a provider’s data from being siloed in old-software databases and filing cabinets.
One of the biggest healthcare challenges this country faces is the shortage of Doctors and Nurses. With 10,000 people a day entering the Medicare population for the next 19 years, a key way to provide the care we need for Americans is to make the on-boarding experience better for everyone. At its core, Silversheet takes care of the people who take care of you. We now recognize that social-determinants such as housing, food and transportation play such an important role in healthcare outcomes and as a society we are empowering patients to become educated consumers… But what about the doctors and nurses who deliver care?
As a patient my healthcare experiences continue to improve. I have all my Apple Watch data and Cedars-Sinai Health records pushed to my iPhone and the experience is seamless. I can share all this information effortlessly to everyone in my Cedars care team and even send them HIPAA compliant messages. The HITECH Act gave incentives to move to EHRs and most of the innovation went to create a better front-end system for facilities and ultimately provide a better patient experience. The patient experience continues to evolve and receive record levels of venture funding, but what about the provider experience?
Silversheet is tackling this issue, and now as a part of AMN Healthcare we will be able to create an amazing experience for all of the providers they staff and the facilities they serve. The healthcare industry is the single largest employer in the US and we are sitting at the intersection of making that whole experience digital.
Focus on Patients not Paperwork
One of our core values at Silversheet is to let providers focus on patients, not paperwork.
As a patient I never thought about the time it took for a provider to start working at a new facility. Isn’t there a magic API that every facility hooks into that has every doctor, nurse and allied health professionals’ current information? It should be that simple, right? Unfortunately this process can take up to 6 months to complete and is very error prone.
I recall talking to one of my doctor friends here in LA that was so proud to finally have his entire house be voice-activated. He showed me how to turn on his alarm, the AC and even open his garage. Then, I noticed a three-ring binder on his coffee table labeled Medical Credentials. It turns out he was looking to get credentialed at a new facility and he had copies of his DEA, State Licenses and a number of other documents he planned on dropping by the front desk of the facility. This was just last year and was further validation that we were on to something big. I sat with him for ten minutes and helped him put everything into one of Silversheet’s free provider accounts and told him that his time is much too valuable; go see patients and let us worry about the paperwork.
This was just one doctor and just one experience. There are over 800,000 patient-facing physicians in the country and a few million nurses; the opportunity for us is huge.
Grateful
As we start this new journey with AMN Healthcare, I want to say thank you to our investors, clients and amazing Silversheet team members. Miles and I will continue to lead the efforts post-acquisition and promise to continue to innovate around the provider experience. I am grateful for my wife, my family and everyone who supported us through this journey and to the AMN team for believing in us. We have already hit the ground running and can’t wait to announce all the great things to come.
Finally, I want to say thank you to all the healthcare professionals in the country, you are the ones who make the real difference in our lives. I urge everyone to do one simple thing this next month, when you see a doctor or a nurse or someone providing care, tell them, “Thank you.” Silversheet and AMN Healthcare have that core value of being grateful to providers embedded in our cultures, and we will continue to work hard everyday to make the lives of our healthcare professionals better.
Thank You again to all of the providers and yes…..We Heard You!
