Mayo Clinic is an investor and will be the first pilot site for Corvus, a company that helps automate surgery referral workflows.
Corvus, which was launched and initially funded by venture firm Redesign Health, automates administrative tasks such as document retrieval, prior-authorization coordination and out-of-pocket cost estimation. Its platform also uses AI to assess surgical eligibility based on each patient’s medical history, procedural protocols and their specific needs.
Ian Strug, founder and CEO of Corvus, recently spoke with Healthcare Innovation about the company’s launch.
Some studies have shown the conversion rate of patient referrals into surgeries at less than 40%, he noted. “There's a major issue where patients won't necessarily come with all of the required information a surgeon needs to make the right decision, or the system doesn't have the ability to go and get that information,” Strug said. “What happens is, the patient is scheduled for a surgical consult, which is a half hour to an hour of a surgeon's time that is barely billable to the bottom line. If that patient shows up and they don't have the MRI that is required, that visit is now 30 seconds long, right? You can't get that hour back.”
Strug said surgeons are typically spending two to three days in clinic per week and two days operating. “Our goal is to bring their operating days to three days a week and their clinic days down to two as standard, and really evening that balance out.”
Strug said the first pilot is scheduled to go live at Mayo Clinic in the first quarter of 2026. The initial pilots are going to be in the neuro-spine division at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., and in bariatrics and orthopedics at Mayo Clinic’s main campus in Rochester, Minn.
Mayo Clinic surgeons involved in Corvus’ product design and clinical validation include Chair of Surgery Michael Kendrick, M.D., orthopedic surgeon Cody Wyles, M.D., and Mayo Clinic Florida neurosurgeon Ian Buchanan, M.D.
Strug added that data interoperability and integration are key for a business like Corvus. “It is the of the utmost criticality to our business for a few reasons. One is that we can't get all the information that we need without fulsome integrations to the EHR and services like health information exchanges, where we can access third-party data, payer data, etc.,” he said, adding that it was critical that the Corvus platform is fully accessible from within the EHR. “If you're working at a hospital as a physician, surgeon, a mid-level provider or a referrals coordinator, you can use all of the Corvus functionality from within your Epic user experience, and it fits within your pre-existing workflow.”
Corvus said its current design includes human-in-the-loop workflows to reduce non-surgical work to free up operating days for surgeons. In the future Corvus plans to seek FDA clearance as a clinical decision support system (CDS) to enable fully automated triage and surgical scheduling.
Strug noted that with this business concept, the return on investment should be clear and immediate. “We don't have to calculate soft ROI around cost savings a year down the line,” he added. “We’re not looking at massive population health-level analytics three years from now to tell you if a certain assay worked better for diagnostics. It is immediate and clear. If you're doing more surgery within two to three months of implementing this tool in the specialties in which you implemented it, then something is working right with Corvus.”
