Flagler Health: The AI-native solution for musculoskeletal care

Today, a musculoskeletal physician spends roughly two hours on a computer for every hour they spend with a patient. The economics make the job even harder. Medicare reimbursement for musculoskeletal care has dropped more than 20% over the past two decades, margins continue to compress, and clinical staff continue to experience high turnover. The patients caught in the middle, many of whom are managing chronic pain or waiting on a procedure, are often stuck between systems that were never built to communicate with each other.

For years, digitizing health records left clinics more fragmented and frustrated than before. Horizontal software promised relief but demanded a new portal, login, and more time from people who already had none to spare. With agentic AI, software can now finally do the work itself. An agent can now triage a patient, manage care between visits, handle billing, and even have conversations with patients. The less clinical staff have to do, the better, which is exactly how Flagler Health's software works: entirely in the background. At Bessemer, our bet on Flagler is based on our belief that healthcare AI is moving toward a model where fewer human touchpoints are needed.

The winners in this space will be deeply vertical solutions that can truly operate speciality-specific clinical workflows autonomously. Flagler is building the first one for musculoskeletal (MSK) care, which is why we’re excited to lead Flagler Health's $50 million Series B.

A seamless platform for MSK clinics

In the last two years, Flagler has gone from a single triage tool to a full-stack clinical and administrative platform now deployed across thousands of providers and millions of patients in over 36 states. We believe Flagler's OS is poised to become the system of action for one of the largest markets in medicine, as musculoskeletal conditions affect more than half of US adults and drive over $400 billion in annual healthcare spend across over 250,000 outpatient providers spanning pain management, orthopedics, neurology, sports medicine, podiatry, and physical therapy. It's also a market we came to know well through our investment in Hinge Health back in late 2019.

Flagler's AI integrates directly into clinics’ existing Electronic Medical Records (EMR), drawing on data from millions of patients and thousands of providers, layering on EMR records, radiology reports, billing codes, and each physician's practice patterns to generate recommendations and automate workflows tailored to that specific practice. It orchestrates the full patient lifecycle across four synergistic product lines, starting with a triage product that matches each patient to the ideal provider and routes them to the right ancillary services, specialists, or procedures. 

Flagler helps the clinic engage patients reminding them of their provider’s recommended post visit treatment (medication adherence, stretches between visits to track pain, mobility, and mental health over time), while their AI call center handles scheduling, intake, reminders, and outreach so staff can spend their time on care rather than the phone. In the back office, the revenue cycle management product handles everything from eligibility, prior authorization, coding, billing, and denials end-to-end. Altogether, Flagler helps clinics deliver optimal care, drive clinic reimbursement while reducing administrative load, and ultimately deliver care that improves patient mobility and pain scores.

Success backed by results and the right team

Flagler succeeds when it's creating value for the practice it serves, and the returns show up fast. On average, Flagler generates $164,000 in additional annual revenue per provider, while saving each administrator over ten hours a month. The patient results are just as considerable. 87% of patients report improved outcomes after enrolling in Flagler's care management, the vast majority feel more connected to their provider, and patient no-shows have fallen by about a third. Clinics report compressed patient turnaround times and prior authorization approval rates approaching 100%.

Results like these can only come from a team that understands the problem from the inside. Flagler’s founding team comprises backgrounds that complement one another and fit the problem perfectly. CEO Albert Katz previously served as the COO and CFO of a Musculoskeletal clinic with over 120 employees. That first hand experience has opened doors with clinic administrators and physicians, especially when complemented with CMO Dr. Leon Anijar's double board-certification in interventional pain and anesthesiology. Leon did his residency and fellowship at Rush and has ensured that Flagler's AI recommendations are grounded in clinical accuracy. CTO Will Hu’s expertise underpins all of this, bringing nearly a decade of AI and machine learning experience in disease detection and progression—including work at IQVIA on patient targeting that directly maps Flagler's triage and outcomes models. This team built Flagler to solve the problems they’ve lived with every day, and their backgrounds give Flagler a rare combination of operational, clinical, and technical credibility that earns trust from clinicians, patients, and administrators alike. 

The future of AI-powered MSK care

Triage, care management, patient outreach, and billing are just the beginning. As Flagler helps practices automate more of their cumbersome day to day tasks, it will become the orchestration layer between providers, MedTech, pharma, and payors. It will also shape how musculoskeletal outcomes are measured, which is what excites us most. Real patient-reported data on clinical outcomes is exactly what value-based care has always needed and rarely had, and Flagler’s data on care pathways matched to outcomes position them for a shift towards reimbursement programs like Medicare's ACCESS model.

At Bessemer, we've been doubling down on our health AI thesis since 2018, and have backed a number of companies automating operational workflows across provider and back office functions, including Abridge, SmarterDx, QVentus, Ansible Health, Plenful, House Rx, Pivotal Health, Amperos, Zingage, and more. Flagler sits at the intersection of our thesis on MSK workflow inefficiencies and our conviction that the best health AI companies bridge administrative work with deep clinical intelligence, moving the needle on both the cost and quality of care. We're honored to work alongside Albert, Leon, Will, and the entire Flagler Health team as they build the AI-native operating system for musculoskeletal care.