Not that long ago, SafeRide Health was a startup looking to disrupt the non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) industry. Since then, SafeRide has grown exponentially, winning multiple awards for the rate of our revenue expansion (1,116% between 2021 and 2024). As the company’s chief financial officer, I am proud we’ve managed to scale with discipline and vision, all while keeping our mission front and center.

As a controller and now chief financial officer, I recognize that I could work in many different industries and at many different companies. Finding the right fit is as much art as science: In 2010, after working for years in the financial services industry, I took a role at a company that specializes in memory care, assisted living, hospice, and home care. Their core value? “Love is greater than fear.” With that ethos behind every employee, they could have tough conversations with family members who were fearful about the future. I realized then that company culture and mission were non-negotiable: I wanted to help a mission-driven healthcare company grow and thrive.  

I’ve checked all these boxes since I started at SafeRide Health 5 years ago. At SafeRide, we provide NEMT service to people who face transportation barriers, ensuring they have access to often life-sustaining medical care. Along with revenue growth, we’ve gone from providing 1 million rides a year in 2021 to more than 12 million in 2026, and we now work with health plans that cover more than 12 million patients.  

Achieving this success has not been an accident. Many investors describe sustainable scale through the lens of Rule-of-40 performance, with annual growth rate and profit margin equal to at least 40%. By maintaining this balance, SafeRide has demonstrated that high-velocity growth and fiscal health are not mutually exclusive.  I credit several key tenets for SafeRide Health’s financial wins so far:

1. Intentional, disciplined growth

2. Operational efficiency and accountability

3. Conservative, smart capital strategy

4. Technology as a financial lever

5. A top-down culture of financial stewardship

Here’s how they’ve all played out at SafeRide:

1. Intentional, Disciplined Growth that Protects the Member

At SafeRide, our leadership team recognizes that growth must be targeted and measured, with a focus first on perfecting our core product of non-emergency medical transportation. We believe that growth should improve service quality for health plan members, not dilute it. That’s why we focused on “building the chassis” first, setting up a strong, streamlined foundation with talented staff and industry-leading technology that makes it more efficient to scale as we gain new clients. Our technology platform was built to capture and record detailed data about every ride—the “digital exhaust” of every interaction. We use this data to ensure we are performing well above the required benchmarks for each client, and that our transportation network and staffing levels are appropriate for every NEMT program, whether it’s a large, multi-state client or a regional provider network. For SafeRide, discipline is about protecting members and ensuring sustainable value for our investors and our clients.

2. Operational Efficiency and Accountability: Building a Lean Engine for Scale

At SafeRide, we invested early on in process improvement. We have a Business Insights team whose primary role is to turn ride and call-center data into actionable insights. They make sure we operate as efficiently and as streamlined as possible, which has helped us to perform at high levels. That’s key in our business, because we’re held to contractual SLAs for both our Medicare Advantage and Medicaid clients. If we were to miss those SLAs, we would be penalized. On the other hand, when we meet and exceed those SLAs, we end up with happy clients and—more importantly—happy members. Proving our KPIs is crucial to winning new business and expanding with current clients. In addition, SafeRide’s lean operations enable scalability without proportional increases in costs.

3. Conservative, Smart Capital Strategy: Scaling Without Leverage

Financial planning is key to managing growth and avoiding overextension in any organization. My team at SafeRide spends a lot of time managing our working capital: We're projecting cash flows daily because our business is just that sensitive. We're very measured in our understanding of upcoming spend and are budgeting, forecasting, and reporting internally on a regular basis to make sure we're all on the same page. If there is an initiative we want to pursue, we budget for it and move forward, keeping savings in reserve for inevitable expenses that are unplanned and necessary.

At SafeRide, we have wonderful investors who believe in us and our mission, and we have benefited from good banking partners. In the 10 years since our founding, SafeRide has been very efficient with our capital, maintaining a balance sheet that is free of long-term debt.  While we utilize a revolving credit facility backed by our accounts receivable to manage working capital, we have avoided the heavy leverage common among our competitors.  The more contracts we sign, the more cash- and working capital-efficient we become. Recently we’ve also formed a partnership with J.P. Morgan: They dug in to understand our business, our cash needs, and our growth needs, finding creative solutions to help us grow. Reaching profitability in 2024 was a pivotal milestone; it has since allowed us to reinvest in our technology and infrastructure from a position of financial strength.

4. Technology as a Financial Lever and Margin Multiplier

Technology has always been a differentiator for SafeRide. Our technology platform, driven by algorithms, takes the guesswork out of providing the most appropriate, cost-effective ride for every member. SafeRide’s smart supply-management tools then dispatch the nearest, best-performing transportation provider. This automation reduces reliance on manual decision-making, enabling us to achieve economies of scale while delivering the best experience for our members. This process also includes integrated guardrails for fraud, waste, and abuse to ensure transportation benefits are being used and administered properly. Once rides are complete, our automated claims adjudication improves processing efficiency and ensures our transportation providers are happy with their SafeRide partnership.

When it comes to additional technological investments, SafeRide’s senior leadership team reviews our extensive technology roadmap on a regular basis to determine what's most important and where we can get the biggest bang for our buck. For SafeRide, technology is not just innovation—it is financial discipline in action.

5. Leadership & Mission: A Culture of Accountability and Financial Stewardship

SafeRide’s culture starts with a simple premise: We put the member first. Teams collaborate to create budgets and guardrails across every department to ensure the company is aligned across disciplines. This also creates accountability, as team members know their budgets, performance standards, and the goals they are aiming to achieve. In return, SafeRide rewards high-level performance with bonuses, internal promotions, and company recognition.  

Finally, at SafeRide we believe in transparency for our employees as well as our clients. Every month we hold an all-hands meeting where operational and financial wins and risks are shared with the entire company. That transparency is how we protect the balance between disciplined growth and sustainable margins as we scale. It’s just another example of how SafeRide inspires employees and leaders to work at their highest levels on behalf of each other, our members, our clients, and our investors.

‍