Source: ABILITY Network Inc

ABILITY Network Acquires ShiftHound

MINNEAPOLIS, April 03, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ABILITY® Network today announced its acquisition of ShiftHound, a leader in cloud-based SaaS healthcare workforce management solutions. ShiftHound provides applications to improve scheduling effectiveness and operational efficiency.

Finding the right balance of staff to meet patient needs is a complex problem with significant effects on costs, patient outcomes, quality of care, reimbursements, and patient and employee satisfaction. Providers need to not only understand the acuity of their patient populations, but bridge that understanding into how they staff. Optimizing this balance in staffing is critical to care quality, compliance with licensing and credential requirements, and a provider’s bottom line.

“ShiftHound’s workforce management solutions together with ABILITY’s existing revenue cycle management and clinical management applications create a powerful combination,” said Mark A. Pulido, chairman and CEO of ABILITY. “In bringing together ABILITY’s clinical intelligence capabilities with ShiftHound’s workforce management solutions, providers will be better able to ensure they are staffed to acuity - improving quality of care while effectively managing costs.” 

Similar to ABILITY, ShiftHound provides solutions to providers of all sizes and all sites across the continuum of care, including acute, post-acute and ambulatory. ShiftHound’s offerings include:

  • Healthcare Workforce Schedule Optimization, which allows customers to optimize shift-based provider schedules, reducing overtime cost and ensuring highest quality of care;
  • Time & Attendance, which tracks and analyzes individual provider work hours and overtime, increasing operational efficiency; and
  • Credential Management, which defines and tracks required certifications, licenses and mandatory training and education to ensure compliance in providing standard levels of care.

“ABILITY continues to advance our mission to help providers of all sizes simplify the administrative and clinical complexities of healthcare,” said Pulido. “ShiftHound is a terrific complement to ABILITY’s technology applications and go-to-market skills, and will help us accelerate development of advanced applications to solve our customers’ toughest challenges around increasing efficiencies and further improving care quality.”

ABILITY provides applications and analytics that are integral in helping with revenue cycle management, clinical management and performance improvement via a powerful, integrated distribution platform.

“The strength and reach of ABILITY’s customer-facing organization means that we can now reach even more providers to help solve challenges associated with workforce optimization and enhancing patient care,” said Ian Chaplin, co-founder and president of ShiftHound. “With deeply rooted expertise in healthcare and technology, both organizations share a commitment to helping simplify complexity. We are excited to join the ABILITY team.”

ShiftHound is based in San Diego and will become an ABILITY Center of Excellence. Chaplin and co-founder, Doug Bertozzi, CTO, are experts in workforce management, having previously founded BidShift, the company that pioneered Open Shift management for clinical staff. All of the company’s employees will join ABILITY. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

About ABILITY Network

ABILITY Network is a leading information technology company helping providers and payers simplify the administrative and clinical complexities of healthcare through innovative applications and data analytics. ABILITY is headquartered in Minneapolis, with principal offices in Boston and Tampa.