Payer Negotiations, Labor Benchmarking, and Financial Decision Intelligence: 6 Takeaways for Healthcare Finance Leaders

Published November 11, 2026

Between rising labor costs, reimbursement pressures, and changing patient volumes, healthcare finance leaders face complex decisions every day. At LIFT26: The Strata Users Virtual Summit for Healthcare, we brought together customers and Strata product experts to explore the challenges facing health systems and share practical approaches to addressing them.

Across three days of sessions and demos, attendees heard how organizations can use data and technology to improve decision-making, from identifying opportunities to strengthen payer contracts to optimizing labor planning.

If you missed the Summit or want to revisit some of the highlights, here are six key takeaways.

1. AI delivers greater value when it connects data to decisions.

Healthcare organizations have access to enormous amounts of financial, clinical, and operational data. To turn that information into meaningful intelligence, healthcare leaders need AI tools that understand the context behind the numbers.

During “State of the Union: AI & Intelligence Solutions,” Strata’s Chief Product Officer Frank Stevens and SVP of Product Management Joel Gerber explored how Strata is building intelligence and AI capabilities into its healthcare solutions to address practical challenges facing finance leaders.

They walked through Financial Decision Intelligence (FDI), which launched in September 2026, exploring how the Command Center and Ask Strata features can help healthcare leaders understand what’s driving financial performance and where attention is needed. So far, one healthcare organization has reduced manual data investigation from two weeks to just one hour using FDI.

With the right AI tools, healthcare finance teams can spend less time gathering and reconciling information and more time understanding performance, evaluating options, and taking action.

2. Clinical and financial analytics can reveal opportunities to improve care delivery and capacity.

During “Connecting Data to Better Outcomes: Yale New Haven Health’s Journey to Improve Orthopedic Performance,” Nancy Kim, Senior Medical Director of Care Signature for the Yale-New Haven Health System, shared how outpatient analytics helped uncover opportunities that traditional inpatient reporting had not fully revealed.

A targeted deep dive into the data revealed a variance that pointed to a process issue. Most patients went home after their procedures, so why were same-day discharge rates at just 6%?

The organization redesigned its care pathways and has seen measurable results: The same-day discharge rate increased from 6% to 27.5%, while average length of stay declined from 1.48 days to 1.10 days. The changes also helped avoid approximately 1,860 bed days, representing an estimated $1.9 million in value.

The results illustrate how detailed analytics can help organizations identify opportunities to improve patient flow, use capacity more effectively, and reduce unnecessary resource utilization.

3. Standardized labor analytics help health systems identify opportunities to improve productivity.

Labor is one of the largest costs in healthcare, and workforce productivity becomes even more complex as health systems grow. As the University of Chicago Medicine expanded its strategic service lines, leaders needed a clearer view of staffing levels, volume-based metrics, and performance against industry benchmarks.

In “Turning Data into Action – A Change Management Approach to Labor Benchmarking,” the UChicago Medicine team (Samantha Noehre, Director of Financial Operations; Morgan Lechowicz, Manager of Enterprise Labor Analytics; and Vanessa Savage, Operational Excellence Partner) shared how the organization implemented Strata's Comparative Analytics solution to support labor cost optimization.

Consistent definitions, stakeholder alignment, executive support, and the integration of analytics into managers’ everyday workflows helped UChicago Medicine turn benchmarking insights into action.

“We focused our benchmarking implementation on strong partnerships across the system — with our operational excellence team, clinical and operational stakeholders, and executive team,” said Noehre. “Transformational change is hard, and it’s not led by finance alone. It took all of us to get us where we are today.” 

4. Stronger payer negotiations start with accurate data and a clear understanding of contract performance.

As reimbursement pressures challenge health system margins, payer negotiations can be an important opportunity to improve financial performance. However, identifying where to negotiate and building a compelling case for change requires an understanding of contract terms, market trends, and the financial implications of each payer relationship.

During “Winning with Data: Leveraging Analytics for Successful Payer Negotiations,” Jay Sen, Director of Payer Analytics, shared how Scripps Health used financial and reimbursement analytics to strengthen its payer negotiations.

The analysis included validating claims against the electronic medical record (EMR), evaluating contract terms, reviewing revenue cycle metrics, and benchmarking reimbursement against Medicare to identify potential opportunities. This analysis helped the organization develop evidence-based negotiation strategies and quantify the potential impact of proposed contract changes.

5. Better service-line planning connects financial performance to the operational factors driving it.

Service-line performance is influenced by more than revenue and expenses. Patient volumes, physician relationships, referral patterns, and the way patients enter the health system all affect financial outcomes.

In “From Planning to Performance: Mastering Service Line Strategy with Strata,” Robert Braun, Vice President of Financial Planning & Analysis at Catholic Health, and Matt Brown, Manager of Budget and Reimbursement at Owensboro Health Regional Hospital, shared practical insights into service-line planning, reimbursement, and performance management.

They emphasized understanding the drivers of patient volume. Elective procedures are often influenced by physician decisions and scheduling, while emergency-driven volume depends more on ED demand and admission rates. Aligning clinical, operational, and finance teams around shared assumptions helps leaders move beyond explaining variances to identifying opportunities for improvement.

6. Capital planning is more effective when leaders have a unified view of organizational needs.

Capital planning can become challenging when requests come through multiple channels and budgets, timelines, and commitments are tracked separately. In “Streamlining and Modernizing Capital Planning to Help Navigate What’s Ahead,” Kaleigh Anselmo, Director of Finance at Yale New Haven Health System, shared how the organization used Strata to centralize capital requests and improve visibility into organizational needs.

By bringing requests, budgets, timing, and committed capital into one place, Yale New Haven Health strengthened data integrity, increased transparency into capital priorities, and improved coordination and reporting.

A unified approach to capital planning can help connect individual requests to broader organizational priorities, equipping leaders to make more informed decisions about resource allocation.

Turning insights into action

Even in a challenging healthcare environment, better data, connected workflows, and collaboration across finance and operations can help leaders identify opportunities and respond with greater confidence.

For a deeper dive, explore "LIFT26 Wrapped" and watch sessions on demand.