By Avery Hartmans From Business Insider

When Alexi Nazem first tried to find freelance work as a physician — otherwise known as locum tenens jobs — he didn’t realize he was signing up for nearly a year-long process.

“I’ve done a lot of hard things in my life, this was possibly one of the hardest and most frustrating things and I don’t mean the actual clinical work,” Nazem said. ” It took me 10 months from the time that I initiated my search to the time that I actually worked the first day of a locum tenens job.”

Nazem said most of the time was wasted going back and forth with a broker and filling out paperwork — including a 94-page paper application that had to be filled out by hand and mailed in. That’s when he realized there had to be a better solution.

Nazem founded Nomad Health, an online platform that connects doctors and hospitals without a middleman. The startup aims to eliminate the brokers in these types of transactions, which are time-consuming and expensive: when a health care facility has available freelance work, it has to pay a broker fee — usually 30 to 40% commission — on top of what they’re paying doctors.

Nomad Health is still in beta and is only available in the Northeast — New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts — but that’s about to change: Nomad just raised $4 million in Series A funding.

Nazem says this financing will help Nomad roll out nationwide and emerge from beta.

“What we hope to accomplish over the next year is turn from a startup into a real business,” Nazem said. ” We’d like to go from being a really exciting concept to being something that’s truly valuable to hospitals, to clinics, and to the clinicians that serve them and their patients.”

Nomad is also part of incubator Grand Central Tech’s latest class of startups. GCT does not take equity in its companies and gives those startups free office space in New York City for a year — which means this funding will really give Nomad the chance focus on its growth.

The round was led by First Round Capital and RRE Ventures with participation from .406 Ventures. First Round Capital partner Chris Fralic will join Nomad’s board and Kevin Ryan, cofounder of Business Insider, currently serves as Nomad’s chairman.

IMAGE: Nomad Health cofounders Alexi Nazem, left, and Zander Pease. Hollis Johnson

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