This Startup Streamlines Health Care Referrals

When doctors in the United States refer patients for specialty or post-acute medical care such as physical therapy or long-term nursing care, nearly half never complete the help-seeking process. Referrals are stagnant in part because provider directories are outdated, insurance coverage is unclear and much coordination still relies on phone calls and faxes.

Carenector, a Denver-based startup launching in 2024, is working to improve the process with software that quickly connects patients to the right care providers while protecting their personal data. Instead of presenting a long list of providers, many of whom would be unsuitable, the company’s referral platform uses AI to weed out facilities that don’t meet the patient’s rehabilitation needs, don’t accept the patient’s insurance, or aren’t conveniently located.

The startup’s platform is aimed at individuals seeking care as well as healthcare organizations and care coordination teams that manage patient referrals. The company aims to help patients while reducing the administrative burden on clinicians and discharge planners, says co-founder Naheem Noah. For now, Carenector is working with patients and facilities only in Colorado, but it plans to expand its coverage nationally.

Noah, a Ph.D. candidate who joined the IEEE in 2022 as a student member, faced the reference problem after tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in one knee while playing football. Finding a physical therapist who accepted his insurance, specialized in ACL rehabilitation, had appointments available and was close to his home required hours of phone calls and searching through inaccurate provider listings, he says.

That experience helped shape the company’s direction, but Carenector takes aim at a broader, persistent failure in U.S. health care coordination.

A faulty SEO system

The business took shape when Noah connected with his co-founder, licensed social worker Aminata Diarra, a social director at a nursing facility. Her role included discharge planning: placing patients in post-acute care settings that bridge the gap between hospital discharge and the patient’s ability to independently manage daily life activities.

For a single patient, Diarra says, that often meant she made 10 to 15 phone calls over the course of a week to find a facility with an available bed, that accepted the patient’s insurance and that could meet care requirements.

She and Noah soon realized they were dealing with the same broken system, from opposite sides. Existing research on benchmark timelines supported their experience. Primary care doctors often send referral notes, analogous to prescriptions, that list the patient’s medical history and describe the treatment needed.

Noah found that only about a third of notes are transmitted in a way that allows providers in nursing homes and rehabilitation centers to access the information.

Doctors often post their ongoing treatment suggestions in sections of a patient’s electronic health record, but providers in post-acute care settings do not have access to them due to medical privacy laws. What is shared is a stripped-down document that omits progress notes and discharge summaries.

Engineering a research-driven startup

Noah is currently a researcher in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Denver, where his academic work focuses on privacy and security of digital systems.

He is the general manager and technical lead of Carenector, overseeing system design, making technical decisions and meeting with investors.

Although the startup is separate from his dissertation research, the venture reflects his broader interest in building secure systems that work in real-world conditions.

Having started a company while a student, he has access to university resources that many early-stage startups lack. He participated in the university’s BaseCamp accelerator and received mentoring and business planning support.

The Carenector team was built with the plan to grow in the future with healthcare compliance in mind. The group includes professionals from regulatory, legal and data engineering fields.

Replace phone calls with digital correspondence

By using standardized digital information shared across medical facilities, Carenector eliminates the need for staff to make phone calls or send faxes. At the heart of the platform is a structured database that connects healthcare providers, including post-acute, specialty and rehabilitation facilities, to insurance plan criteria and facility attributes such as accessibility and service capabilities.

One of Noah’s biggest challenges is obtaining accurate data on what services facilities offer, what insurances they accept, and whether a patient’s insurance plan covers the treatment offered by the treating physician.

“In the United States, health care information is not centralized,” he says, “and insurer directories are often incorrect or outdated.”

To address this issue, Carenector integrates publicly available data sets from the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), including plan attributes, service areas, quality ratings, and issuer-level transparency data. These public-use files provide plan- and provider-level information that helps standardize coverage criteria, geographic availability, and performance metrics. Carenector integrates this structured public data with facility-provided information and benchmark results analytics to improve match accuracy.

“By replacing manual coordination with clear rules, accurate data and built-in privacy protections, we hope to make access to care a common part of recovery, not another barrier.” »

This structured data helps Carenector evaluate plan criteria, provider capabilities, geographic availability and quality indicators to support baseline decision making. The company standardizes and organizes information within its own system architecture and uses mapping and geolocation APIs to integrate location-based filtering and workflow capabilities for patients, providers and care coordinators.

Because CMS data is updated periodically, Carenector supplements it with additional structured data sources and benchmark results analytics to better understand plan acceptance patterns. Room availability information comes directly from participating establishments, who are responsible for updating their status in the Carenector system.

Whether referrals pass or fail provides crucial feedback, Noah says. When referrals to specific facilities repeatedly remain incomplete (meaning the patient does not receive the care recommended by the provider), Carenector’s AI-driven matching algorithm adapts to this pattern and reduces the likelihood that that facility will be considered for similar cases. Establishments which systematically accept and complete references are classified preferentially.

Applications for patients and facilities

The company has integrated its data management wizardry and AI intelligence into applications for patients and clinicians.

The patient app helps users locate appropriate healthcare services for free. Users can search for care by service type, zip code or insurance company without creating an account. They receive a list of matching installations that can be shared via clipboard or emailed to themselves or their family members.

In the facility’s app, clinicians enter diagnosis, rehabilitation needs, equipment requirements, insurance type and location without sharing personally identifiable patient information. Organizations can communicate using secure messages that disappear after a set period of time. Files and images are only displayed once and deleted after viewing.

Establishments that use the application pay Carenector a flat fee for each successful referral. The patient app is free.

The startup does not sell or share data with third parties, Noah says.

“Privacy is a central design requirement for the Carenector system, not a last-minute addition to the finished product,” he says.

The company minimizes the collection of personal data to avoid becoming a data repository. Although its role is limited to coordinating referrals, Carenector works with independent security auditors to validate that its operational and data processing practices comply with the requirements of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). HIPAA establishes standards intended to protect sensitive patient information from unauthorized disclosure.

Noah says he’s confident Carenector will hit that mark because the app is designed to reduce the collection and exposure of sensitive information as much as possible.

Economic model and measured expansion

Carenector’s growth plan, Noah says, is strategic. Rather than scaling quickly, he says, he seeks to enter one region at a time, incorporating feedback from each local deployment before expanding the business further.

He estimates that in five years, Carenector will be a core part of the gold standard healthcare infrastructure, integrated into the workflows of hospitals, post-acute care facilities, insurers, employers and leading electronic health record systems such as Epic and Cerner, while also increasing the visibility of healthcare facilities in underserved and remote areas. The plan, he says, is to support thousands of business recommendations per day, up from the roughly 200 daily recommendations it currently generates. Noah also looks forward to the broader adoption of APIs that enable care coordination and facility discovery directly within clinical workflows.

He says he sees his startup as a way to reduce unnecessary stress in times when patients are vulnerable.

“By replacing manual coordination with clear rules, accurate data and built-in privacy protections,” he says, “we hope to make access to care a common part of recovery, not another barrier.” »