Five trends shaping value-based care in 2026

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Every payer surveyed reported growth in value-based care contracts over the past year, and 99% expect more in 2026, yet the capacity to operationalize those contracts has not kept pace. Reveleer's second-annual report, The State of Technology in Value-Based Care 2026, with survey research by The Harris Poll and independent analysis by Mathematica, found the same imbalance across every trend it measured. Adoption has outpaced governance.

Jay Ackerman, CEO and President of Reveleer, joins RISE Radio host Ilene MacDonald to walk through the five trends and what they signal for 2026. Ackerman draws on Reveleer's work with health plans and providers to explain why contract growth, AI adoption, and data investment all climbed while the governance to manage them lagged, and where leaders should focus first.

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Featuring:

Jay Ackerman
CEO and President
Reveleer

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What you'll hear in this episode: 

• Why contract volume is rising while mean payer value-based care contract share fell from 55.1% to 47.5%, and provider alignment on shared goals slipped from 100% to 88%
• Why 98% of providers report having the right technology infrastructure while 94% say manual processes still dominate their workflows, and 91% of payers say the same
• Why data security displaced data quality as the top investment priority, while data quality remains the most-cited integration barrier for 49% of providers and 45% of payers
• The governance problem behind 100% AI adoption, when only 35% of organizations have a documented process to detect incorrect AI outputs
• Where payers and providers are most exposed on CMS audits, and why traceability is the readiness test that matters
• Ackerman's three priorities for 2026: AI governance, consolidation around accuracy over feature count, and documentation built into the workflow

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Buying the technology turned out to be the easy part. Workflows have to adapt, governance has to exist, and organizations have to define what success looks like."
_{- Jay Ackerman, CEO and President, Reveleer}

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Three priorities for healthcare organizations in 2026

1. Put AI governance in place before an audit forces it. Every organization surveyed runs AI, but only 35% have a documented process to detect incorrect outputs. Ackerman's first priority for 2026 is a governance process with human review and hallucination detection, established before a RADV finding makes it mandatory.
2. Consolidate around accuracy, not feature count. The rush to buy point solutions has left disconnected technology stacks, with 94% of providers and 91% of payers still running manual workflows. Fewer, well-integrated applications outperform a larger stack. The work now is connecting what is already installed.
3. Build documentation into the workflow. Regulators adjudicate on documentation, not intent, yet only 13% of payers and 29% of providers describe themselves as well-prepared for current CMS policy. Traceability from retrieval through submission keeps records audit-ready before an auditor asks for them.

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The five trends come from Reveleer's second-annual report, The State of Technology in Value-Based Care 2026, with survey research by The Harris Poll and independent analysis by Mathematica, based on a survey of 200 US-based senior decision-makers at payer and provider organizations, fielded in March 2026.

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