Welcome to our Featured Founder series, where you’ll meet startup founders from Tampa-St. Petersburg who are building and scaling their ventures to solve some of the world’s greatest challenges. We interviewed Rafael Fernandes of Compass Health, a patient-centric care coordination and navigation service. Compass Health helps individuals and families access high-quality specialists, manage appointments, with ongoing support.

Please provide a brief one-liner about your company.

Compass Health is a patient-centric care coordination and navigation service. We help individuals and families access high-quality specialists, manage appointments, with ongoing support.

What were you doing previously, and what inspired you to launch your company?

Before launching Compass Health, I spent over a decade working at the intersection of technology, operations, and systems. Professionally, I saw how complex systems can work beautifully when they’re designed around the user—and how broken they become when they aren’t. Personally, healthcare was always close to home: my family and my wife’s family are physicians and nurses, so I had a front-row seat to both sides of the system—the provider burnout and the patient frustration. Compass Health was born out of seeing smart, capable people struggle to navigate a system that should be serving them, not the other way around

What pain point is your company solving? What gets you excited to go to work every day?

Compass Health solves the navigation problem in healthcare. Patients don’t fail the system—the system fails them. We help individuals and families access the right specialist, at the right time, with clarity, coordination, and advocacy. What excites me every day is knowing that our work removes anxiety from people’s lives during moments when they’re already overwhelmed. When someone says, “I finally feel taken care of,” that’s the win.

Name the biggest challenge you faced in the process of launching the company. How did you overcome it?

The biggest challenge was designing a model that is both patient-first and structurally compliant in a heavily regulated industry. Healthcare doesn’t forgive shortcuts. We overcame this by slowing down when it mattered—investing deeply in legal structure, compliance, physician alignment, and trust-building with specialists. We chose long-term credibility over short-term speed, and that decision shaped everything.

Where do you see your company headed next?

Our immediate focus is scaling thoughtfully across Florida, starting with the Tampa Bay region. Long-term, Compass Health becomes the trusted care navigation layer between patients and the healthcare system—working alongside employers, families, and providers. We’re building infrastructure, not just a service, with the goal of setting a new standard for how modern healthcare coordination should feel.

Give us a tactical piece of advice that you’d share with another founder just starting out.

Design your company as if regulation, scale, and scrutiny are inevitable—because they are. Get the structure right early, especially in healthcare. Also, talk to your customers before you fall in love with your solution. The market will always tell you the truth if you’re willing to listen.

Why Florida?

Florida is where healthcare demand, population growth, and system fragmentation collide. It has one of the fastest-growing and most diverse patient populations in the country, with a high concentration of specialists and complex care needs. Tampa Bay, specifically, is a world-class medical hub—but access and coordination still lag behind. Florida isn’t just where we’re launching—it’s where this model matters most.