Hospitalists Now, Inc. (HNI), a full-service physician group practice, management and consulting company focused on the delivery of hospitalist services, today announced its first round of venture capital funding. The $3.5 million in Series A equity financing was provided by life sciences venture capital firm Santé Ventures.

HNI, founded by CEO and President, Michael Gonzales, supplies and coordinates inpatient care for its contracted client hospitals in partnership with local primary care physicians and specialists. Already serving 14 hospitals and 42 providers, HNI utilizes its unique documentation and clinical protocols to provide value to its clients through increased throughput, length of stay management and case mix optimization. In addition to their foundation of hospitalist services, HNI is in development of a proprietary technology that will manage hospitalist medicine clinical workflows, coding, billing and collections, order set optimization, financial reporting, and bi-directional communication with primary care providers.

“The funding from Santé will allow us to continue software development and begin beta testing of the technology,” said Michael. “In addition to software development, the financing and relationships we’ve made through Sant gives us leverage to reach out to the physicians, specialists and hospitals outside our current network that could benefit from use of our hospitalist services.”

This is the sixth investment for Austin-based Santé Ventures since their fund close of $132 million in December 2007 and their second investment of 2009. “Hospitalist medicine is the fastest growing specialty with about 28,000 practicing hospitalists,” said Santé Ventures Managing Director, Doug French. “And with Hospitalists Now’s services combined with their technology, the company will improve the quality and reduce the cost of inpatient care by increasing efficiency of the tools hospitals use and decreasing the time that physicians spend at the hospital away from their practice and patients.”