Waterford health firm grew staff by 65% in first 12 months of pandemic

RelateCare is a Waterford city business which also has offices in Tralee and two US sites in Little Rock, Arkansas and Cleveland, Ohio. Founded in 2014, the firm has 1,100 staff and works with healthcare providers to provide administrative and clinical support.

RelateCare manages all back office functions and communications on the patient journey, and also has clinical teams that provide follow-up services with patients to try and keep them out of hospital subsequently to reduce overload.

“The bulk of our team is focused on the administrative steps that occur before a patient is seen. A large percentage of our business and customers are based in the US,” Conor O’Byrne, chief executive of RelateCare, told the Business Post.

The firm started out as a joint venture between Rigneydolphin and the Cleveland Clinic, which is particularly renowned for heart treatment. The introduction between the two businesses was made by Enterprise Ireland, and encouraged Rigneydolphin, which was better known for customer care services across other sectors, to enter the healthcare field.

“We were exploring opportunities in healthcare, but there were challenges and support needs that hospitals particularly needed,” O’Byrne said. “We helped the Cleveland Clinic with a specific project around patient access. On the back of that success, a lot of other organisations in the US became interested in what we were doing.”

The size of the company’s staff is particularly high for an indigenous Irish business, and O’Byrne said that it experienced 65 per cent growth in total staff during the first 12 months of the pandemic.

“When we formed the company, we spent a lot of time making sure that we did things right. We ensured there was a proven return on investment for our clients. With the pandemic, challenges around staffing and shortages meant that organisations, especially existing customers, leaned on us more,” he said.

“Between 2022 and 2023, we’ll grow our workforce and our revenues by around 35 per cent each. We’ve had challenges in attaining and retaining staff, which has led to us expanding our operations with the locations in Tralee and Little Rock.”

O’Byrne said that Enterprise Ireland had been an integral part of the growth of RelateCare.

“We would have been one of the first organisations in their healthcare portfolio. They’ve always stayed close to us along our progression. We’ve built up great relationships with their Boston-based life sciences offices,” he said.

“We’ve worked with them to open up doors not just for RelateCare, but for other Irish companies looking to expand into the US. It has been a great aid for our growth.”

In the post-pandemic world, O’Byrne wants RelateCare to increase the range of services it offers so it can provide more benefits to its clients.

“We want to continue this journey of growth. We’re focused on improving what we’re doing. We’re not necessarily providing direct patient care, but we’re providing important interactions at difficult times for people,” O’Byrne said.

“We want to move up the ladder in terms of the type of work we manage, into more complex tasks and activities. We’re bringing new innovations through and we’ve got some exciting partnerships on the horizon. We want to be an end-to-end turnkey solution for our customers.

This Making It Work article was produced in partnership with Enterprise Ireland