This Startup Streamlines Health Care Referrals

When medical doctors within the United States refer sufferers to specialty or post-acute medical care corresponding to physical therapy or long-term nursing care, nearly half never complete the process of discovering assist. Referrals stall partially as a result of supplier directories are outdated, insurance coverage protection is unclear, and far coordination nonetheless depends on cellphone calls and faxes.

Carenector, a Denver-based startup launched in 2024, is working to enhance the method with software program that shortly connects sufferers with applicable care suppliers whereas defending their personal data. As an alternative of presenting an extended checklist of suppliers, a lot of whom wouldn’t be a very good match, the corporate’s referral platform makes use of AI to remove amenities that don’t meet the affected person’s rehabilitation wants, don’t settle for the affected person’s insurance coverage, or are usually not conveniently situated.

The startup’s platform serves people searching for care in addition to health care organizations and care coordination groups that handle affected person referrals. The corporate goals to assist sufferers whereas decreasing the executive burden on clinicians and discharge planners, says cofounder Naheem Noah. As of now, Carenector works with sufferers and amenities solely in Colorado, nevertheless it plans to develop protection nationwide.

Noah, a Ph.D. candidate who joined IEEE in 2022 as a scholar member, encountered the referral drawback firsthand after tearing an anterior cruciate ligament in a knee whereas enjoying soccer. Discovering a bodily therapist who accepted his insurance coverage, specialised in ACL rehabilitation, had appointments accessible, and was close to his dwelling required hours of cellphone calls and searches via inaccurate supplier lists, he says.

That have helped form the corporate’s course, however Carenector is geared toward a broader, persistent failure in U.S. well being care coordination.

A damaged referral system

The corporate took form when Noah linked together with his cofounder, licensed social employee Aminata Diarra, a social director at a nursing facility. Her position included discharge planning: putting sufferers in post-acute-care amenities that bridge the hole between hospital discharge and the affected person’s potential to independently handle life’s each day actions.

For a single affected person, Diarra says, that always meant she made 10 to fifteen cellphone calls over the course of per week to discover a facility with a mattress accessible, that accepted the affected person’s insurance coverage, and that would meet the care necessities.

She and Noah quickly realized they have been coping with the identical damaged system from reverse sides. Present analysis on referral lapses supported their expertise. Main care physicians typically ship referral notes—analogous to prescriptions—that checklist the affected person’s medical historical past and describe the wanted therapy.

Noah found that solely about one-third of the notes are transmitted in a manner that permits suppliers at nursing properties and rehab amenities to entry the data.

Physicians typically submit their strategies for ongoing therapy in sections of a affected person’s electronic health records, however suppliers at post-acute amenities don’t have entry to these due to medical privacy legal guidelines. What will get shared is a pared-down doc that omits progress notes and discharge summaries.

Engineering a research-driven startup

Noah is at the moment a researcher within the University of Denver laptop science division, the place his educational work focuses on privateness and safety in digital programs.

He’s Carenector’s chief government and technical lead, overseeing the system’s design, making technical choices, and assembly with buyers.

Though the startup is separate from his dissertation analysis, the corporate displays his broader curiosity in constructing safe programs that work in real-world situations.

Starting an organization whereas a scholar, he has entry to school sources that many early-stage startups lack. He has participated within the college’s BaseCamp accelerator and obtained mentorship and enterprise planning help.

The Carenector workforce was assembled with the plan to scale up sooner or later with well being care compliance in thoughts. The group contains professionals from regulatory, authorized, and knowledge engineering fields.

Changing cellphone calls with digital matching

By utilizing standardized digital data shared amongst medical amenities, Carenector eliminates the necessity for employees to make cellphone calls or ship faxes. On the core of the platform is a structured database that hyperlinks care suppliers—together with post-acute, specialty, and rehabilitation amenities—with insurance coverage plan standards and facility attributes corresponding to accessibility and repair capabilities.

One of many largest challenges for Noah is getting correct knowledge on which companies amenities supply, which insurance coverage they settle for, and whether or not a affected person’s insurance coverage plan covers the therapy proposed by the referring doctor.

“Well being care data in the US isn’t centralized,” he says, “and insurance coverage supplier directories are sometimes fallacious or outdated.”

To deal with that, Carenector incorporates publicly accessible datasets from the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), together with plan attributes, service areas, high quality scores, and issuer-level transparency knowledge. These public-use information present plan-level and provider-level data that assist standardize protection standards, geographic availability, and efficiency indicators. Carenector integrates this structured public knowledge with facility-supplied data and referral end result analytics to enhance matching accuracy.

“By changing guide coordination with clear guidelines, correct knowledge, and built-in privateness protections, we hope to make accessing care a routine step in restoration—not one other impediment.”

This structured knowledge helps Carenector consider plan standards, supplier capabilities, geographic availability, and high quality indicators to help referral decision-making. The corporate standardizes and organizes the data inside its personal system architecture and makes use of mapping and geolocation APIs to combine location-based filtering and workflow performance for sufferers, suppliers, and care coordinators.

As a result of CMS knowledge is up to date periodically, Carenector dietary supplements it with further structured knowledge sources and referral end result analytics to raised perceive plan acceptance patterns. Room availability data comes instantly from collaborating amenities, that are chargeable for updating their standing inside Carenector’s system.

Whether or not referrals succeed or fail offers essential suggestions, Noah says. When referrals to particular amenities repeatedly go uncompleted—which means the affected person doesn’t obtain the beneficial care from the supplier—Carenector’s AI-driven matching algorithm adjusts to that sample and reduces the chance of that facility being thought-about for comparable instances. Amenities that constantly settle for and full referrals are ranked preferentially.

Apps for sufferers and amenities

The corporate has poured its knowledge administration wizardry and AI smarts into apps for sufferers and clinicians.

The affected person app helps customers find applicable well being care companies without charge. Customers can seek for care by service sort, ZIP code, or insurance coverage firm with out creating an account. They obtain a listing of matching amenities that may be shared by way of clipboard or despatched by electronic mail to themselves or members of the family..

Within the facility app, clinicians enter the analysis, rehabilitation wants, gear necessities, insurance coverage sort, and site with out sharing personally identifiable affected person data. Organizations can talk utilizing safe messages that disappear after a set interval. Information and pictures are proven solely as soon as and deleted after viewing.

Amenities that use the app pay Carenector a flat price for every profitable referral. The affected person app is free.

The startup doesn’t promote or share knowledge with third events, Noah says.

“Privacy is a central design requirement for Carenector’s system, not a last-minute add-on to the completed product,” he says.

The corporate minimizes the gathering of non-public knowledge to keep away from changing into an information repository. Though its position is proscribed to coordinating referrals, Carenector is working with unbiased safety auditors to validate that its operational and data-handling practices align with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) necessities. The HIPAA legislation units requirements meant to guard delicate affected person data from unauthorized disclosure.

Noah says he’s assured that Carenector will obtain that ranking as a result of the app is designed to cut back the gathering and publicity of delicate data wherever doable.

Enterprise mannequin and measured enlargement

Carenector’s development plan, Noah says, is strategic. Quite than scaling quickly, he says, he’s trying to enter one area at a time, incorporating suggestions from every native deployment earlier than increasing the corporate additional.

He envisions that in 5 years, Carenector will function a core piece of well being care referral infrastructure—embedded within the workflows of hospitals, post-acute amenities, insurers, employers, and main electronic health record programs corresponding to Epic and Cerner—whereas additionally growing visibility for care amenities in underserved and distant areas. The plan, he says, is to help 1000’s of facility suggestions per day, in contrast with the roughly 200 each day facility suggestions it at the moment generates. Noah additionally appears ahead to the broader adoption of APIs that enable care coordination and facility discovery to happen instantly inside scientific workflows.

He says he sees his startup as a strategy to cut back pointless stress from moments when sufferers are weak.

“By changing guide coordination with clear guidelines, correct knowledge, and built-in privateness protections,” he says, “we hope to make accessing care a routine step in restoration—not one other impediment.”