Noblesville travel nursing firm bought by Denver company

A Noblesville company that provides traveling nurses and rehabilitation professionals to more than 3,500 hospitals, clinics and health agencies across the United States has sold itself to a Denver staffing company.

IPI Travel President Letha Engelman confirmed Monday she sold her company to Advanced Medical, a fast-growing staffing firm. Terms were not disclosed.

The combined companies will maintain IPI operations in Noblesville, Engelman said.

“We are growing,” she wrote in an email. “Our plan is to hire [and] to move into a new, 13,000 [square foot] office space” by early next year.

The sale will result in the company's name being tweaked for a few months to "IPI Travel powered by Advance Medical." In March, it will be undergo a complete name transition to Advanced Medical, Engelman said.

IPI, founded in 1999 as Innovative Placements Inc., has 41 employees who help recruit and match nurses and therapists to health care facilities in all 50 states. That includes more than 100 hospitals in Indiana.

IPI Travel also counts long-term care facilities, surgery centers, independent labs and home health care agencies as clients.

Engelman declined to disclose revenue or to say why she decided to sell, except to point out the combined companies will “increase market share and allow for collaborative expertise.”

She said she and her husband, John, will have a “vested interest” in Advanced Medical.

“We are thrilled to partner with a company that shares our core values and together create even greater value for our clients and travelers,” Engelman said in a statement released by both companies.

The Engelmans founded the company with only a home computer and wound up creating a multimillion-dollar business, IBJ reported in 2005.

They started with an ad in the back of a trade journal, a computer in Letha’s bedroom and $30,000 from a silent investor.

The company specialized in filling employee gaps at hospitals and clinics with traveling nurses. According to its website, the company offers nurses packages up to $50 an hour plus benefits.

Advanced Medical was founded in 1989 in Port Orange, Florida, to provide physical therapists, occupational therapists and speech language therapists. It has since broadened into nursing. The nursing division places nurses in operating rooms, post-anesthesia care units, intensive care units, labor and delivery and emergency rooms on a contract and permanent basis.

Advanced Medical’s travel nursing division was previously known as Advanced Surgical and Rise Medical Staffing.

In 2013, Inc. magazine named Advanced Medical to its Inc. 5000 list, a ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. The company ranked 3,597 on the list, with 2012 revenue of $26.5 million, and three-year revenue growth of 84 percent.

The company moved to Denver in 2010. It has offices in Florida, Colorado, Oregon, South Dakota and California.

In a written statement Monday, Advanced Medical said its “partnership” with IPI will give it “a stronger foothold in hospital settings nationwide.”