Care delivery · Specialty pharmacy
Float Health
A marketplace that puts registered nurses in patients’ living rooms to give the infusions specialty pharmacies dispense. Started by an emergency room nurse who first did it for his own father, it says it has now passed its hundred thousandth visit.
The patient was his father
Ryan Johnson spent about twenty years in emergency departments, rescue work and hospital leadership. His father has been a specialty pharmacy patient for most of his life, dependent on infused medicine to hold a chronic condition in check.
So Johnson gave his father the infusions himself, at home. On the company’s own account, “When he got his treatments, he thrived. When he missed them, he ended up in the ICU.”
That is the whole company in one sentence. “Using his skills and expertise outside of the hospital to keep his dad happy and healthy was the spark that ignited Float,” the about page says.
Float launched in August 2021 in San Diego, spread into Orange County, and was doing dozens of visits a month when Y Combinator took it into the Winter 2022 batch.
The bottleneck is a person, not a molecule
Float puts specialty medicines at 53 percent of pharmaceutical spending, and many of them can only enter a patient through a needle held by an experienced nurse. Home administration has been possible for decades. The constraint is who shows up.
When no nurse is available, the patient goes to a hospital for something routine, or skips the dose. The money is not marginal. A UnitedHealth Group analysis, reported by Health Exec in February 2022, put the saving from moving administered specialty drugs out of hospital settings at $16,000 to $37,000 per privately insured patient per year across the five priciest conditions, about $4 billion a year. Float cites the same numbers.
Float parts company with the pandemic-era nurse gig platforms on where the work sits. Those sold shifts into hospitals and drew hard criticism for it. Float’s case is that a home infusion visit is a self-contained job of forty-five minutes to a few hours, one patient and one drug, with no institutional knowledge to absorb.
Two founders, one household
Ryan Johnson is the clinical half, an ER nurse who had also co-founded a coffee roasting company. Christy Johnson, the COO, came from entrepreneurship rather than medicine, having founded an events business and co-founded a marketing subscription platform. Y Combinator still lists the two of them as the founders and the team size as three.
The site shows a wider bench, including a CTO, a head of growth who helped scale Eventbrite and a head of operations from One Medical. None are named in any press release found for this profile.
Dozens of visits a month to a hundred thousand
The numbers Float publishes form a clean series. Dozens of visits a month in early 2022. Statewide Arizona in November 2023. Nineteen thousand visits and a 97 percent staffing rate at the Series A in March 2024. Forty-five thousand, about three thousand a month, in March 2025, alongside the hundredth pharmacy partnership. Fifty-five thousand by June 2025. More than eighty-six thousand on the website now, and a post marking the hundred thousandth visit.
In November 2025 it announced SOC 2 certification and turned that into a wedge against the fragmented agency market it competes with.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| SEC Form D | One filing, Aug 1, 2023, CIK 0001987169. Offering of $9,999,998 with $9,990,994 sold to 10 investors, first sale June 30, 2023, Rule 506(b). No amendment and nothing later as of Sept 2026. | Public record |
| FDA, trials, grants, papers | Nothing in FDA 510(k) or PMA files, ClinicalTrials.gov, NIH RePORTER, NSF awards or PubMed. For this business model none would be expected. | Not found |
| Named customers | Optum, CVS, Option Care, Alliance RX (Walgreens), Kroger, Kabafusion, Soleo Health, NuFactor, Care Fusion, CA Specialty Pharmacy, and Advanced Infusion Care as the hundredth partner. None has confirmed it in public. | Company-stated |
| Visit volume | 19,000 (Mar 2024), 45,000 plus (Mar 2025), 55,000 plus (Jun 2025), 86,000 plus (website, 2026), 100,000th visit (LinkedIn). Consistent and rising. Unaudited. | Company-stated |
| SOC 2 | Announced Nov 21, 2025 as Type 2, with Vanta and Prescient Security named. The report is offered on request, not published. | Company-stated |
| Coverage versus plan | The site lists AZ, CA, GA, IN, MI, NV, OH, PA, TX and WA, with Florida Health District D still “on the way.” In March 2025 the company said Florida would open in the second quarter of that year. | Differs from plan |
| Network size | The March 2024 release says “hundreds of nurses” in its body and “thousands of highly skilled nurses” in the boilerplate below. Outlets reprinted both, so one round produced two network sizes. | Internally inconsistent |
| Where it sits | Releases and LinkedIn say San Francisco, 11 to 50 employees. Y Combinator lists Carlsbad, CA and a team size of 3. The Form D gives a Sacramento address. The careers page says remote-first. | Records disagree |
| Nurse relationship | Nurses contract as independent nurse contractors on 1099s and carry their own liability insurance. Pay is per visit: $50 to $100 an hour on the job posting, $70 to $105 in California per the FAQ, with no pay for drive time. | Company-stated |
| Visit verification | Section 12006 of the 21st Century Cures Act made states require EVV for Medicaid personal care by Jan 1, 2020 and home health services by Jan 1, 2023. Float captures a location snapshot at arrival and departure. The mandate runs through Medicaid, narrower than the nationwide home infusion standard the company describes. | Public record |
| State licensure | No home health agency, home care or nurse staffing licence in the name Float Health Inc. surfaced in searches for this profile. The model leaves the licence with the pharmacy. | Not found |
| Independent coverage | Axios had the Series A first; Home Health Care News, HIT Consultant, Staffing Industry Analysts, HME News and FinSMEs followed. Nothing independent found after March 2024. | Independent |
Read plainly: the capital and the board are on the public record, and the cost case for home administration was made by someone other than Float. Everything about the size of the business is the company’s own account. The internal numbers hang together across four years, which is more than many startups manage, but no customer has confirmed a contract in public, no auditor report is published, and the last independent article appeared in March 2024.
What to watch
- Florida. Promised for the second quarter of 2025, still listed as coming in Sept 2026.
- A second Form D. Nothing filed since August 2023, and the Series A money is now three years old.
- A named customer speaking for itself. One quoted pharmacy executive would move most of this table out of the company-stated column.
- The enterprise motion. Float is hiring its first VP of enterprise business development, which suggests the 100 partnerships are branch-level.
- Whether Mike Ghaffary kept the board seat. He took it as a Canvas Ventures general partner and left Canvas for Burst Capital in February 2025.
In their words
“After years in the emergency room treating patients with chronic conditions, and from treating my dad who suffers from one, I realized that moving specialty medicine into the home would be a sea change for everyone”
Ryan Johnson, co-founder and CEO, Series A release, March 2024 · Company release
“Expanding access to this type of care would have a huge impact on patient outcomes, not to mention the burnout of my nurse friends exhausted by long shifts and juggling priorities.”
Ryan Johnson, quoted by Home Health Care News, March 28, 2024 · Independent
“Being accepted into Y Combinator is a tremendous honor and a testament to the hard work and dedication of our team”
Christy Johnson, co-founder and COO, January 2022 · Company release
“Health care provider shortages are affecting patients’ ability to get timely care and investors are increasingly looking for help in tech-driven marketplaces like Float.”
Erin Brodwin, Axios Pro Health Tech Deals, March 28, 2024 · Independent
“Float Health provides a marketplace for in-home medical infusions, making healthcare safer, easier, and more efficient by moving visits out of hospitals and into the home.”
Canvas Ventures, portfolio page, lead investor · Investor
“the market is composed of tiny agencies operating in the dark ages that lack the requisite controls and compliance necessary to properly handle PHI and prevent costly HIPAA breaches”
Float Health, SOC 2 announcement, November 21, 2025 · Company
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordForm D, Float Health Inc., CIK 0001987169
- Public recordElectronic Visit Verification, Cures Act section 12006
- IndependentExclusive: Nurse staffing marketplace Float raises $10M Series A
- IndependentHome-Based Care Staffing Startup Float Health Raises $10 Million
- IndependentFloat Secures $10M to Bring Specialty Care Home
- IndependentFloat hits $15M in funding
- IndependentMoving specialty drug administration from hospitals to homes could save $4B per year
- IndependentVC Mike Ghaffary leaves Canvas for Burst Capital
- InvestorCanvas Ventures portfolio page
- InterviewEp81: Breaking the Emergency Room Trap with Ryan Johnson
- CompanyFloat Raises $10 Million Series A
- CompanyFloat Leads in Connecting Nurses with High-Quality Gig Work
- Company45K+ Home Visits Completed, 100+ Partnerships
- CompanyFloat Health Achieves SOC 2
- CompanyAbout page, FAQ, job posting, HIPAA statement
- CompanyFloat Health company page and posts
- CompanyFloat Health directory listing, W22
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
