Crosby Health

High-Level Overview

Crosby Health is a health tech company that builds Apollo, a proprietary clinical large language model (LLM) automating clinical appeals, revenue cycle management (RCM), and related administrative tasks to boost healthcare revenue recovery.[1][2][6] It serves small practices, hospitals, and multi-facility health systems by generating, submitting, and tracking denial appeals—especially clinical ones—to insurers like Medicare, solving the problem of time-consuming denials that cost hospitals nearly $20B annually, with $10B recoverable through appeals.[2][5][6] The platform achieves 91.8% accuracy on medical licensing exams, outperforming models like Google's Med-PaLM 2, and delivers 300% faster appeals processing.[1][2]

Founded in 2022 in New York City, Crosby Health raised $2.2M in pre-seed funding from Amplo Ventures, NOMO Ventures, and angels, showing early growth momentum amid rising AI adoption in healthcare admin.[2][4]

Origin Story

Crosby Health emerged from the real-world pain of a five-physician private practice facing high denial rates that required extensive appeals.[4] Founders built internal tools to automate this process using clinical AI, expert appeal writers, and a submission engine, then expanded to help other healthcare organizations after proving effectiveness.[4] Launched in 2022 and based in New York City, the company quickly developed Apollo—a custom-trained clinical LLM for appeals, coding, and auditing—differentiating it from general-purpose models like ChatGPT.[1][2][4] Early traction included outperforming market-leading clinical AIs and securing pre-seed funding, validating the pivot from internal solution to scalable SaaS platform.[1][2]

Core Differentiators

• Proprietary Apollo LLM: Built from scratch for healthcare tasks like appeals, coding, and chart auditing; achieves 91.8% accuracy on medical exams, surpassing Med-PaLM 2 and Meditron; automates full workflow from letter generation to insurer submission and tracking.[1][2]
• End-to-End Appeals Automation: Handles clinical denials (e.g., authorization, inpatient-only) across professional fees and hospital billing; direct Medicare integration eliminates multiple portals; 300% speed increase for partners.[1][5][6]
• Additional AI Tools: Multichannel patient engagement, virtual health assistants, care plan coordination, predictive denial analytics, and high-volume processing (300 pages at 60 words/second).[1][2][3]
• Hybrid Human-AI Approach: Combines AI with expert writers for maximum overturn rates, reducing provider burden and write-offs.[4][5]

Role in the Broader Tech Landscape

Crosby Health rides the AI-in-healthcare admin wave, targeting RCM inefficiencies where denials drain $20B yearly from hospitals—half overturnable but manually intensive.[2] Timing aligns with surging clinical LLMs post-ChatGPT, enabling precise handling of unstructured clinical data that general AIs struggle with.[1][2] Favorable market forces include payer scrutiny, staffing shortages, and regulatory pressures on reimbursements, amplified by post-pandemic revenue optimization needs.[5] It influences the ecosystem by reducing clinician admin time (focusing them on care), scaling to health systems, and setting a benchmark for specialized clinical AI over retrofitted models.[1][6]

Quick Take & Future Outlook

Crosby Health is positioned for expansion as AI matures in RCM, potentially capturing share in the $10B+ recoverable denials market through Apollo's superior accuracy and integrations.[2] Next steps likely include broader payor connectivity, enterprise partnerships, and new use cases like predictive coding to preempt denials. Trends like multimodal AI and value-based care will shape its path, evolving its influence from appeals specialist to full RCM platform—transforming healthcare from reactive admin battles to proactive revenue sustainability, much like its origins in a single practice's breakthrough.[1][2][4]