In 27 states, nurse practitioners are allowed to operate with full practice authority. That means they can run their own practices and work outside of hospital systems—often a more lucrative path. It’s an ongoing regulatory transformation to the health care industry, with more states likely to grant full practice authority to the female-dominated profession as a way to increase access to health care and especially primary care.
That’s just one of several trends transforming health care right now that led Lava Sunder and Anne Gifford to found the company Corner Health. The changing regulatory landscape for NPs, primary care shortages, and AI’s new applications in health care business operations are all at the center of their company. “It felt like the perfect storm to create something,” Sunder says.
The pair just closed a $25 million Series A round led by the health care investor Oak HC/FT, Fortune is the first to report. With $7.5 million in seed and pre-seed funding, that’s a total of $32.5 million.
Sunder and Gifford have been talking to NPs for years about what they need. “They’re wildly entrepreneurial,” Sunder says. Seventy-eight percent of NPs want to start their own businesses. (And 77% of NPs are women.) “They frankly feel quite dismissed in the medical environments they’re in today,” she adds.
Many patients seek out the kind of care NPs offer. Primary care appointments are longer, often with a more holistic approach.
Corner Health is not a consumer brand; it’s an operating layer for NPs that allows them to operate as solo practitioners without hiring clinic support staff. Corner’s AI tool handles scheduling, patient communication, lab orders, referrals, and more. The service is operating in Arizona and Washington state now, with 70 NPs running their own businesses using the platform. Some of those NPs have already doubled their salaries compared to what they were earning in hospital systems. Corner is on track to have more locations than Amazon’s One Medical by the end of the year.
Oak HC/FT founding partner Annie Lamont has been watching the changing regulatory landscape for NPs for more than a decade. “We always thought they should be empowered to do more as part of the system,” she says. In May, the Wall Street Journal christened NP “the hottest job in health care.”
With health care jobs in general cited as a bright spot in the labor force amid AI disruption, models like Corner’s change what those jobs can lead to. “This gives nurses more options,” Lamont says. “And I think that will drive more people into that specialty, because they believe they can be a small-business person.”
“It was a job and it wasn’t a career,” Lamont says. “And I think people are looking more for careers—we need that in health care.”
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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