Payors, who play this game thousands of times a year, come to the table with a stacked deck and are able to see everyone’s cards. Meanwhile, Providers aren’t allowed to look at their own hand or see what cards others are holding. They’re expected to play blind. They can’t see how competitors are paid, and they can’t validate whether their rates are fair. Even when they attempt to improve their chances by purchasing data insights, they’re told the data is too sensitive to be shared, or worse, Payors swat aside their math as “wrong.” 

This wildly lopsided imbalance isn’t accidental, and even in today’s data-rich environment, it persists. That’s why I’m thrilled to announce I’m joining After Transparency as Chief Strategy & Development Officer, because I believe they can finally give Provider leadership teams competitive market clarity, necessary comparative precision, and the edge they need in their contract negotiations. 

Recent price transparency regulations have cracked wide open what was once the industry’s biggest secret: negotiated rates between Providers and Payors. Unfortunately, what followed these federal mandates has been chaos, rather than clarity.

A multitude of opportunistic tech and data vendors rushed to publish inadequate portals filled with averages, quartiles, and disconnected data points that lacked necessary context and curation. 


These vendors raised the hopes of earnest Providers, then left them to do the hard work themselves—filtering, validating, and defending numbers they didn’t fully trust and couldn’t confidently present in negotiations. It’s been a mediocre experience at best. 

Without trust in their data, Providers lack the confidence to negotiate effectively. And uncertainty at the table is the fastest way to lose leverage with a Payor. On top of that, most transparency data vendors sell to Payors—enabling Payors to use this data during negotiations, putting Providers at an even greater disadvantage.

While other vendors were offering inadequate solutions, crashing their IT systems trying to download transparency files, or bragging about how much money they invested in parsing the Payor’s datasets, After Transparency had already built enterprise-grade infrastructure to ingest, analyze, and curate negotiated-rate data at extraordinary scale—we’re talking thousands of trillions of longitudinally connected pricing datapoints, refreshed monthly. And no, that’s not a typo. 

That data is transformed into precise, apples-to-apples, market-specific intelligence, down to the penny, that Providers of all types can actually use. Providers don’t have to invest or scale a team of analysts to ingest and interpret Payor datasets. After Transparency delivers clear, defensible insights that can improve negotiations, optimize revenue, support strategic service-line decisions, and reveal how a Provider truly compares in their market. 

Critically, After Transparency aligns exclusively with Providers. There’s no selling insights out the back door. No “leveling the playing field” by quietly empowering Payors. This tool is equipped with views even Payors don’t have access to, and After Transparency has no intention of undercutting Provider trust by sharing this important, proprietary intelligence with Payors.   

Simply having transparency data rarely moves the needle in reimbursement negotiations. What Providers need is trusted, curated intelligence with context. This information can then be shared, defended, and confidently used in negotiations.

Since 2023, After Transparency has built a company and customer experience that stands apart. Operating less like a data vendor and more like a managed care insights partner, they handle data complexity with discipline and care so Provider executives can focus on strategy, not analysis. Each data delivery is curated with the Provider's unique market-specific nuances in mind. It’s this customer engagement philosophy, aligned with a simplified delivery approach, that engenders Provider trust. 

With access to this kind of intelligence, Providers are seeing remarkable results. Most have achieved significant results like the following: 

• 45%–147% rate increases with major commercial Payors

• Immediate lifts starting at 4%, scaling to nearly 50% on strategic DRGs

• A 125% reimbursement increase in year one



For decades, confidentiality clauses and black-box analyses protected the status quo. Providers went into negotiations with outdated claims data, anonymized benchmarks, or reports that couldn’t be shared without being dismissed outright.

Meanwhile, Payors could make claims that were nearly impossible to refute.

When my mother was hospitalized near the end of her life, she was overwhelmed, not just by her health, but by uncertainty. She didn’t know if what she owed was fair, and she didn’t know how to find out. Worst of all, she felt powerless in a system that should have been clearer, fairer, and more humane.

Ironically, while my mom’s story is from the perspective of a patient, Providers feel a similar powerlessness as they face Payors at contract renewal time. And here’s the thing: if insurers were truly good stewards, the data would show it.

• It would show that the best outcomes are rewarded,
• Academic medical centers would be paid for the burden they carry,
• Third party negotiators wouldn’t be locked out of negotiations, and
• Contracts would be understandable and terminable.

But that’s not the world we’re operating in. Or at least, it hasn’t been. Thanks to new regulations, and After Transparency, things have the potential to change. Providers can identify where they’re leaving money on the table and walk into a negotiation with real data, not just guesswork, a hope, and a prayer. 

I’ve always loved an underdog story. And the Provider–Payor power imbalance may be the biggest one in the U.S. economy.

Hospitals are blamed for rising costs, yet the real question is: Are Payors fairly reimbursing Providers and are these tactics spurring consolidation as a result? 

After Transparency exists to answer questions like that with facts, not rhetoric. And we’re working to answer these questions for Provider groups of all shapes and sizes. 

Transparency regulations aren’t going away. Enforcement is increasing, and After Transparency is leading the way in identifying when Payors are not compliant in their data submissions. Providers who act now can gain a meaningful advantage. Those who wait will be negotiating from behind–against both competitors and Payors who already understand the terrain.

I’m proud to join After Transparency and help Providers finally fight and win on equal footing. If you’re on the Provider side and want to talk about what transparency can look like when it’s done right, as well as the real impact it have in support of your organization -- I’d love to connect.