Fellow Health Partners is a global standout—both for the extra money it brings clients and its customer-first approach.
Medical billing is the backbone of the health care industry as it’s how doctors and providers get paid. Before Michael N. Brown founded Fellow Health Partners, billing options for health care providers were both archaic and “almost designed to be broken,” he says. Notably, many doctors neglected to resubmit or appeal insurance claims for reimbursement after being denied once. When first starting in the industry, Brown, CEO, learned that health care providers often walk away from 12% of their revenue, “either because they didn’t know or didn’t have the resources to go after it,” he explains. He understood that practitioners only had two viable options: rely on their already overworked office administrators to follow up on insurance claims or partner with large overseas tech companies who charged low rates but had limited success. “I saw a huge opportunity to provide a valuable service for a great price,” says Brown. Today, the company services between 500 to 750 clinicians, submits over $1.5 billion in claims, and collects well over $300 million on behalf of clients each year. “I grew the business five times in year one and 10 times in year two,” says Brown. “Since then, we’ve been steadily growing by 20% to 30% annually.”
The Early Days
Brown previously worked as a business consultant and self-described “problem-solver” for large companies facing financial problems. When he traveled home to Long Island to help his terminally ill father sell the Brown family accounting business, he had every intention of returning to consulting. However, an unexpected encounter with the owner of a medical billing company changed his trajectory.
By 2017, Brown had engaged his extensive personal network of orthopedic professionals, investing a significant amount of his own money, and taking what he calls “the biggest risk of my life” to found Fellow Health Partners.
After building the billing framework and buying multiple companies to test their new medical billing processes, Brown learned what worked. He notes that Fellow Health Partners collects an average of 5% to 7% more than most health care companies. “So even if I charge 4%,” he says, “my services are essentially free, and clients make an extra 1% to 3% profit.”
The End Result
The payoff has been substantial. “We went from no employees to over 300 in five years,” says Brown, “and from $100,000 in revenue to well over $10 million.” Fellow Health Partners’ backbone rests firmly in technology, both through its Knowledge College™ internal training department, which certifies professional coders and billers, and its workflow management and analytics reporting platform, SAVi™. The company has a deep executive bench of industry knowledge who pride themselves on creating customized solutions for each client while staying laser-focused on patient and customer relations. This formula has led to a trove of satisfied clients nationwide and many word-of-mouth referrals. As Brown looks toward the future, he takes a moment to appreciate the company’s success. “We went from industry outsiders to powerful players in our market segment,” he says. “Our clients say they would recommend us to anyone.”
