Vanessa Benavides-Lemos was in the backseat of an Uber at 2 a.m., going home from her job as a nurse when she received a call from her boss asking her to work another shift.
While she was too tired to agree to another shift, she quickly had an idea that would keep her up for hours.
“That’s when I thought it would be a great idea to have an Uber-like system for nurses and healthcare providers,” recalled Benavides-Lemos. “When I got home, I devised my whole business plan and model. I love innovation and solutions and, my brain was going.”
That ride in 2016 resulted in Benavides-Lemos starting Go RN LLC, a Santa Ana-based company that built an application for hospitals to schedule nurses, gornapp.com.
About 33 hospitals have signed up to use the app and another 90 are expressing interest, she said.
Users include KPC Healthcare Inc., which has four facilities in Orange County.
Benavides-Lemos was born and raised in Santa Ana. She’s worked in the nursing industry for over a decade, learning first-hand how inefficient hospitals are at planning shifts. She said her app has eliminated the five-hour process.
“What we’re doing is a click of the button,” she said. “It’s essentially like an Uber.”
The company estimates that the Go RN platform will be able to cut costs up to 30% for healthcare facilities, while increasing the average registry salary by up to 25%.
The app is free to use for nurses and hospitals. She estimated every hospital floor can save about $140,000 annually by using it. Her company makes money as a broker providing 200 contract nurses.
A secondary line of business opened. The firm certifies nurses, a process that hospitals usually need three to four months to accomplish, but she can do it within a matter of days.
She raised almost $1 million from a group of 32 investors, who are mostly doctors and nurses.
“We really do know the industry.”
She’s looking to raise another $1 million for further development and a new location to expand.
