Second in a quarterly blog series on partnership, ecosystems, and the future of healthcare interoperability
A few months ago, I wrote a blog focused on why 1upHealth doesn’t want to grow alone. The big takeaway was that the biggest problems in healthcare, especially the fragmentation between payers and providers, don’t get solved by any one company working in isolation. Since then, I’ve had a lot of conversations that have sharpened that thinking, and I want to build on it here.
Here’s the part I didn’t say clearly enough the first time: complementary isn’t just about tech stacks fitting together; or one company’s product plugging into another’s. The partnerships that actually move the needle for our customers are the ones where the people and the approach are different too. Different lenses on the same problem. Different scar tissue from having solved it, or failed to solve it, before.
It’s Not Just What You Bring to the Partnership, It’s How You See the Problem
When we evaluate a partnership at 1upHealth, the technical fit is almost the easy part. Does their platform talk to ours? Does the workflow make sense for a health plan? Those are important questions, but they’re not the ones that predict whether a partnership actually delivers for the customer.
The harder, more interesting question is this: does this partner see the problem differently than we do, in a way that adds something we couldn’t have gotten to on our own?
A consulting firm that’s spent 20 years inside health plan operations sees a compliance deadline differently than a data platform solution provider does. A systems integrator that’s lived through a dozen failed implementations sees “go-live” differently than a startup does. None of those perspectives is more correct than the others. But put them in the same room, pointed at the same customer challenge, and you get an answer that’s more durable than either one of us would’ve landed on alone.
That’s the thing I want more of this year: not just partners who plug into our platform, but partners who challenge how we’re thinking about the problem in the first place.
The CMS-0057 Deadline Is Real, But It’s Also Not the Whole Story
I’d be doing a disservice to this topic if I didn’t acknowledge the obvious: CMS-0057 compliance is bearing down on health plans, and there’s a genuine amount of work remaining ahead of the January 1, 2027 final deadline. Patient Access, Provider Access, Payer-to-Payer Data Exchange, Electronic Prior Authorization: getting all four right, in the next few months, isn’t a trivial lift for most organizations. That urgency is real, and it’s shaping a lot of our partner conversations right now, as it should.
But here’s what I keep coming back to in customer and partner conversations alike: compliance is the forcing function, not the finish line. The health plans that treat this deadline as a checkbox to clear are going to end up with infrastructure that does exactly one thing: keep them out of trouble. The health plans working with the right combination of partners are already asking a better question, which is how the same investment in FHIR-first infrastructure can lower provider abrasion, improve member experience, and decrease operational costs, long after the deadline has passed.
That’s the shift we’re leaning into for the rest of this year. Yes, get compliant. But we’re spending more of our energy on what comes after: how a health plan actually uses this investment to compete, not just comply. That’s a conversation that requires more than a platform. It requires partners who’ve thought hard about the “and then what” question, because they’ve likely already seen it play out with other customers.
1up Partner Spotlight: UST
One partnership that captures this combined effect well is the one we’ve built with UST, a global technology and consulting firm with deep experience across healthcare. UST brings something 1up doesn’t have on its own: decades of trusted relationships inside health plan organizations and the implementation muscle to turn a platform decision into a live, working system. We bring the FHIR-first infrastructure and the regulatory depth. Together, the combination moves faster and lands better than either of us would alone.
Ruben Prakash, Healthcare Solutions Leader of UST recently put it best when he said: “The most successful health plans are looking beyond compliance. They need partners who can turn regulatory requirements into lasting business value. Partnering with 1upHealth allows us to combine deep health plan expertise with proven FHIR-first infrastructure. We’re helping organizations build a modern foundation that works with existing investments while improving member and provider experiences and enabling better decisions. With the January 1, 2027 CMS-0057 deadline approaching, forward-looking health plans are using FHIR as a platform for interoperability, innovation, and long-term transformation.”
That’s the pattern we want to repeat: partners who bring trust and delivery depth we don’t have, applying it to the same customer problem from a different angle than we would on our own.
What’s Next for the 1up Partner Program
Over the next quarter, you’ll see us leaning harder into these combined conversations, 1upHealth alongside partners like UST, with health plans that are thinking past January 2027. Not instead of the compliance work. Alongside and ahead of it. Because the plans that get this right won’t just be compliant. They’ll have a foundation their teams can actually build on for member experience, provider relationships, and cost efficiency, for years past this deadline.
If you’re a health plan wrestling with the CMS-0057 deadline, or a technology, consulting, or channel partner who sees the problem differently than we do and wants to compare notes, I’d genuinely like to hear from you. Please reach out.
