Healthcare-focused fintech launches platform in Missouri

Robin Robeson serves as executive adviser and board member for the startup.

A married couple with Springfield connections is behind a healthcare-focused financial technology company that looks to simplify the management of medical bills for patients.

Alexandria, Virginia-based MediFi LLC, which does business as moopFi, launched its patient-centered online platform of the same name on May 13, said Ali Tweel, chief operating officer for the company she co-founded with her husband, Chase. The couple formerly resided in Springfield and have lived in Virgina since 2022.

The platform, available at moopfi.com, allows patients to consolidate multiple medical bills into a secure dashboard, replacing scattered provider statements, due dates and payment portals with a single streamlined process, company officials say. Users immediately receive a 10% reduction on the total principal owed, along with flexible monthly payment options, ranging from 12 to 84 months, Ali said.

Initially launching in Missouri, moopFi is also eligible to do business in North Carolina, Chase said, adding the company has licenses pending in Virginia and Tennessee. The Tweels declined to disclose startup costs.

“We want to be the go-to platform that people turn to manage their medical bills,” Ali said. “We have the instant principal reduction, but having the extended terms can allow people to reduce their monthly payments. So, that is the other value add of the business.”

As for the company name, Chase said “moop” in insurance terms is an acronym for “maximum out-of-pocket.” The couple say the term had particular significance on their business model and wanted to marry it with the company being a fintech.

Acute need
Ali said Missouri was chosen as the first place in which to launch as the couple has personal and professional connections in the Show Me State. The couple met in Springfield in 2010 and moved away together to Kansas City in 2014.

“It made a lot of sense to grow this business close to our networks and where there is an acute need,” she said.

Results from a 2024 survey by the Missouri Foundation for Health showed that 50% of Missouri adults reported having current or recent medical debt in the past five years. Three in 10 adults with recent medical debt said in the survey it negatively impacted their credit score. Roughly 30% reported having medical debt in excess of $1,000, and 10% said their debt was over $5,000.

Once users upload their medical bills and select a payment plan, moopFi coordinates full payment with providers, shifting the administrative burden away from households. Chase said the 10% discount afforded to its clients is negotiated by moopFi with healthcare providers.

“We do it on the back end, and we spare the patient from having to wait on our success of negotiating a discount,” he said, declining to disclose current client totals. “We take on the risk. If our case managers fail to strike a deal with a healthcare provider to get a discount negotiated that’s at least 10%, then that’s our loss.

“We concede it’s bold, but we have a sound financial model in our business plan that projects profitability, notwithstanding this very patient-friendly orientation.”

Ali described the startup venture as “lean” with a core day-to-day team of three employees. The company also contracts with specialty consultants, such as advisers and legal counsel. She said moopFi is actively seeking to expand its management team. Ali focuses on the business full-time while Chase works as an executive compensation and employee benefits attorney with Wilkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, according to his LinkedIn profile.

‘Relationships matter’
One of those advisers is Robin Robeson, a retired longtime Springfield banker who also has experience across healthcare and technology. Chase said he moved to the Queen City in 2010 for a position at Pension Consultants Inc., where he met fellow employee Robeson.

While Robeson left Pension Consultants in 2011 to work at CoxHealth for a year before taking on a leadership role at Guaranty Bank, she said the two have remained in contact over the years. Robeson, who also is a former president of the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors, said she retired from Guaranty Bank in 2021.

“This is a classic example of why relationships matter,” said Robeson, who started last fall as an executive adviser with moopFi and is a minority owner in the company. “I’ve always known what he’s doing. He’s always known what I’m doing.”

Robeson is the only current external board member for the company, joining the Tweels, who said they also have board expansion plans. Robeson said Chase contacted her last year about moopFi, seeking her involvement and advice.

“We had multiple conversations over many months, and I went out and did my own research and determined that this would be something that had the potential, I think, to be the most interesting and fulfilling thing that I’ve ever done in my career,” she said.

Noting she has long been concerned about the healthcare crisis in the U.S., Robeson, who served for several years on the CoxHealth Board of Directors, said there is a need for the service that moopFi provides.

“I was really astounded at what the need was – how many people, families, individuals were incurring high medical debt. So that was pretty disheartening,” she said. “There are many companies out there that provide consumer lending services for healthcare expenses, but there’s really no value add there. They’re basically just a lender.”

Companies such as Goodbill focus on auditing and negotiating bills, charging a percentage of the savings they achieve, while Paytient offers interest-free payment plans for terms up to 12 months.

“One of the things I was very upfront with Chase about is that I will not be involved in anything that I consider to be predatory lending. It’s just a core value for me,” Robeson said, adding the Tweels felt the same. “I felt like we had the potential to do this differently and to really provide some value add.”

Robeson said her experience in the financial services, healthcare and technology fields was an attractor to moopFi.

“This company is a fintech that operates in the healthcare space, and so there’s an extremely high barrier to entry into this industry,” Robeson said. “When you think about financial services and healthcare, you put those two things together, the regulatory compliance burden is huge.”

She said the company must navigate data privacy and security requirements of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act while also complying with financial regulations like the Truth in Lending Act and the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.

Software engineering
Because moopFi handles sensitive healthcare information and financial workflows, the company partnered with Springfield-based software engineering firm Moonbeam Development LLC to custom-build a platform with the functionality required to support medical bill management.

“From our first conversations, it was clear this wasn’t just another software project,” said Richard Harris, CEO of Moonbeam Development, via email. “Some are exciting from a technical standpoint, but moopFi immediately stood out because of the problem it’s trying to solve.”

Harris said the current version of the moopFi platform took roughly two months to develop and was built on Moonbeam’s proprietary system it calls Marketbyte. He said the system goes far beyond traditional website builders because it’s designed to manage large-scale business processes and operational workflows.

“That flexibility allowed us to rapidly construct the moopFi platform while still giving it powerful capabilities out of the box,” he said.

Ali said moopFi had very complex needs for its platform, including the HIPAA-compliant setup. Its servers are housed in Springfield Underground, she said.

Past and future
Ali said the concept originated several years ago as she and other family members were amid struggles with medical bills.

“I had a very, very difficult pregnancy, had a lot of complications that had me hospitalized multiple times,” she said. “At the same time, I had a 1-year-old and was working very long hours. So, I just didn’t have the daytime hours or the bandwidth to deal with my bills.”

Her father also was dealing with cancer and putting medical bills on credit cards, she said.

“We were all overwhelmed, and I was looking for a solution that just didn’t exist,” Ali said.

As the idea of moopFi took shape, she said one of the challenges to bring the concept to fruition was that no blueprint for it existed at the time.

“We needed to be very fastidious with regulatory compliance,” Ali said. “We needed to figure out how this platform would work and what it would look like both to the user and on the back end. So, there was quite a bit to navigate to bring this thing to market.”

With help from Moonbeam Development, Ali said plans for a moopFi app are in progress. Hopes are for a launch later this summer.

Currently a home-based venture, the Tweels have designs on opening a brick-and-mortar office in Springfield within two years, Chase said.

“The ideal office with us would have a couple of workspaces for case managers and then also a boardroom so that high level strategic meetings could be hosted,” he said.