Reversing Healthcare Hiring

How Dr. Iman Abuzeid Built a Billion-Dollar Platform by Reversing Healthcare Hiring

Iman Abuzeid is one of the most interesting healthcare entrepreneurs of the last decade because she solved a workforce problem by questioning a basic assumption: Why should nurses apply to hospitals?

Instead, she built a platform where hospitals apply to nurses.

That simple reversal became the foundation of Incredible Health, now one of the largest healthcare hiring marketplaces in the United States. The platform serves approximately 1.5 million healthcare workers and 1,500 healthcare employers, including many of the nation's largest hospital systems.

The Problem She Identified

As a physician with a medical degree from University College London and an MBA from The Wharton School, Abuzeid observed a paradox:

• Hospitals complained about severe nursing shortages.

• Nurses complained about poor recruiting experiences and difficulty finding the right jobs.

• Hiring often took 3 months or longer.

• Recruiters spent enormous amounts of time chasing candidates.

Rather than viewing this as a labor shortage problem, she viewed it as a marketplace inefficiency problem.

The Core Innovation: Employers Apply to Nurses

Traditional model:

1. Nurse searches job boards.

2. Nurse submits applications.

3. Hospital reviews candidates.

4. Nurse waits.

Incredible Health flipped the model:

1. Nurse creates a profile.

2. AI matches them with qualified openings.

3. Hospitals send interview requests.

4. Nurses decide which opportunities to pursue.

This is essentially applying the logic of:

• LinkedIn recruiting

• Match.com

• Uber-style marketplace matching

to healthcare hiring.

Why It Worked

The platform aligns with a fundamental economic reality:

Qualified nurses are the scarce resource.

When demand exceeds supply, the market naturally shifts toward the worker.

Instead of making nurses compete for jobs, Incredible Health makes hospitals compete for nurses.

That dramatically improves the candidate experience while reducing recruiting friction. Hospitals reportedly reduce hiring times from national averages of roughly 86–90 days to under 20 days.

Business Model

One of the smartest parts of the model is who pays.

• Nurses use the platform for free.

• Hospitals pay for access and hiring services.

This creates strong network effects:

More nurses → more valuable to hospitals.

More hospitals → more valuable to nurses.

Once both sides reach scale, the marketplace becomes difficult to replicate.

The AI Advantage

The company has evolved beyond a simple job board.

Today it uses AI-powered matching and recruiting tools, including AI voice agents that help automate parts of the hiring process and improve recruiter productivity. The company describes itself as an AI-native healthcare career marketplace.

Leadership Lessons

Several lessons stand out from Abuzeid's approach:

1. Don't accept industry assumptions

Most entrepreneurs would have tried to build a better nursing job board.

She asked whether the entire hiring process should work differently.

2. Solve expensive problems

Hospitals lose significant money from vacancies, overtime, traveler costs, and agency staffing.

If you can reduce those costs, customers will pay.

3. Build a marketplace, not just software

Software sells features.

Marketplaces create network effects.

Network effects create defensibility.

4. Focus on permanent staffing

While much attention in healthcare has gone toward travel nursing, Incredible Health focused on helping hospitals fill permanent positions faster and retain staff longer.

What Athletic Trainers Can Learn

For someone in athletic training, the most interesting takeaway may not be healthcare hiring itself.

It's the idea of reversing the marketplace.

Imagine if:

• Schools applied to athletic trainers.

• Sports medicine clinics competed for ATs.

• PRN events recruited credentialed ATs based on profiles and ratings.

• Employers had to market themselves to clinicians instead of clinicians endlessly applying.

As athletic training faces workforce shortages and retention challenges, the "employers apply to clinicians" model may be more relevant than many realize.

Dr. Abuzeid's success came from recognizing that when talent is scarce, the platform should be designed around the professional—not the employer. That insight helped build a company valued at approximately $1.65 billion and transformed how a large portion of healthcare hiring operates today.