EP259: What Are Payers Looking to Solve For Right Now? With Rahul Dubey of Percynal Health Innovations

In this episode, Stacey Richter talks with Rahul Dubey, founder of Percynal Health Innovations and former chief innovation officer at AHIP, about what payers are looking to solve for right now.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

✅ The four core challenges Rahul Dubey's strategic working groups keep surfacing across payers and providers

✅ Why payers should think of themselves as "great aggregators" of data and solutions

✅ Why information transfer without extracting real value from it doesn't work anymore

✅ How relationship innovation and business model innovation matter as much as technology

✅ Rahul's advice to health plans and providers looking to collaborate better

WHY THIS MATTERS

Rahul Dubey brings a structured lens to payer innovation: get to real population health management, cut operational inefficiencies, stop trafficking information without extracting value from it, and level up health literacy. He argues payers are increasingly becoming aggregators — of data, of solutions, of services — rather than just risk-bearing entities, and that the innovation happening right now is more about relationships and business models than pure technology. His closing question for anyone in this space is simple but pointed: who are we actually trying to serve?

=== LINKS ===

🔗 Show Notes with all mentioned links: Episode Page

🔗 Healthcare Industry Acronyms and Terms

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00:00 Introduction.

02:08 The stated needs of payers.

03:24 "Where are the inefficiencies that we can actually cut out of the system?"

05:14 A reverse approach to meeting the needs of payers.

06:35 Information transfer—what this means.

09:42 "Innovation is a team sport."

13:12 The "optimal solution."

18:49 "The lines of communication and business model creation … it's getting very creative right now."

20:10 Data play and finding key insights.

20:49 "A more definitive risk."

21:24 Vendors as "solution providers."

21:33 "The great aggregators"—collaborating optimally.

22:39 Brian Van Winkle and Rishab Shah on NODE.Health's "Ease of Doing Business."

25:16 "It's more relationship innovation and business model innovation than technology."

27:02 Rahul's advice to health plan collaborators, like insurance carriers.

29:44 Rahul's advice on how providers can collaborate better.

30:37 What's essential to payer success.

30:56 "Who are we trying to serve?"