Investment will fuel product development, expansion into new hospitals and health systems
Chiefy, the pioneering cloud platform that helps surgical teams seamlessly embed quality and communication best practices, today announced it has raised $4.2 million in seed funding to accelerate and expand product development and customer acquisition. The new investment was led by LionBird, with participation from Nina Capital and Emerge Ventures.
The funding comes as hospitals and health systems continue to struggle with financial and operational issues. The lingering workforce crisis has many organizations seeking new ways to engage and retain clinicians. According to 2022 NSI National Health Care Retention & RN Staffing Report , the average hospital can save $262,300 per year for each percentage point it reduces nurse turnover, with operating room nurses being the most difficult to recruit. Meanwhile, surgeons, anesthesia providers, nurses, surgical technicians, and other perioperative stakeholders are challenged to increase efficiency as they provide patients with the highest quality of care.
“When everyone is forced to do more with less, we must find new ways to employ technologies to help clinicians focus on what’s important,” said Chiefy Co-Founder and CEO Maya Ber Lerner. “Chiefy is built to challenge the idea that if hospitals want high quality, they need to be slower, or clinicians need to suffer. We believe that quality, efficiency, and clinician experience can be a win-win-win. This requires building a culture of trust, and our technology serves as an enabler for building this culture.”
Globally, over 300 million surgeries are performed each year, and more than $50 billion is wasted due to related errors––80 percent of which stem from miscommunication. According to the Joint Commission 2022 report, communication breakdowns continue to be the leading factor contributing to serious medical errors. Multi-disciplinary surgical teams are hard-pressed to convene safety huddles (or team briefs)–short meetings that proactively enable them to focus on patient safety, team alignment, and communication. Instead, many teams rely on emails, text messages, and phones calls about each surgery. Often, by the time the entire team is in the operating room it is too late to address communication errors without causing delays, waste, and frustration. Getting all stakeholders in a room at the same time before each procedure is increasingly challenging––and often impossible. With Chiefy, surgical teams can easily perform digital huddles on a cloud-based collaboration platform––built by clinicians for clinicians––that seamlessly complements the clinical workflow.
“Delivering great patient care requires shared understanding and goal alignment between all members of a patient’s care team, a significant challenge in complex clinical environments.” said LionBird Partner Dr. Robert Lord. “Chiefy is at the forefront of not only putting the information clinical team members need at their fingertips, but facilitating the communication that is essential to quality care delivery and clinician engagement.”
An academic study with NYU Langone Health published in the Journal of Neurosurgery showed a statistically significant 35% reduction in last-minute OR requests, such as change of equipment and trays, change in patient and room preparation, change in anesthesia plan, and more. A later study showed a reduction in length of stay, readmission rates, time to incision, and cases overrun by greater than 30 mins––in addition to improved case time prediction.
“Teamwork and communication are the foundation of patient quality and safety,” said Dr. Peter Pronovost, Chief Clinical Transformation Officer and Chief Quality Officer at University Hospitals Health System. “Using technology and systems thinking to implement proven teamwork interventions like pre-op huddles and checklists at scale is a critical evolution of decades of effort in patient quality and safety. I’m excited to see Chiefy’s work on this global healthcare challenge.”
As a cloud-based SaaS platform, Chiefy represents a low-cost, low-risk opportunity for hospitals and health systems to quickly implement and scale a secure, compliant collaboration platform to engage clinicians and improve care quality. The platform is HIPAA compliant and does not require EMR integration to demonstrate results and return on investment. Unlike local quality improvement projects that take years to implement and are hard to scale, Chiefy can be implemented in as little as two weeks, with no significant upfront investment, and deliver tangible benefits immediately. To learn more about how the platform works and its benefits, visit the Chiefy product resource page and the Pre-Op Huddle and Surgical Quality Resources page.
Originally announced April 24th, 2023
