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A CEO Briefing by Axis Growth Partners — Commercialization Architecture™ ACCESS Isn’t a Policy Update. It’s the 2026 Market Separation Event. ACCESS is not a single CMS program. It is the combined economic force of: 2024–2026 mental-health parity (MHPAEA) enforcement , 2025 CMS Interoperability & Prior Authorization Final Rule , 2026–2027 Medicare Advantage (MA) network adequacy modernization , and Explosive GLP-1 drug cost pressure now reshaping benefits. Together, these cha

Why Most Digital Health “Savings” Don’t Survive Economic Scrutiny — And the Framework That Will Define 2026–2028 Winners By Tom Riley Founder & Commercialization ArchitectAxis Growth Partners Executive Summary For the last decade, digital health has marketed its economic impact through the same story: that telehealth, remote monitoring, virtual care, AI agents, and chronic-care platforms can unlock over $1.2 trillion in healthcare savings. But that story, as uplifting as it s

There’s a shift happening in healthcare that most teams haven’t recognized yet — but every payer, clinician, employer, and commercialization leader will feel by Q1. The economic center of gravity is moving. Not toward AI. Not toward GLP-1s. Not toward hybrid care. Those matter — but they’re not what’s driving the market’s hardest decisions. Behavioral health has become the multiplier for every major cost curve in healthcare. Not a side category.Not a referral pathway.Not an a

Across payers, providers, employers, and investors, three priorities are rising to the top entering 2026: 1️⃣ Cost-trajectory impact 2️⃣ Workflow simplicity 3️⃣ Decision-grade evidence Every organization is tightening standards. But here’s the surprising part: There’s still no agreement on which of these actually matters most. And that disagreement is shaping how deals get evaluated, delayed, or approved. If clinical outcomes are strong but cost movement isn’t clear… ➡️ Is th

By Tom Riley, Founder & Commercialization Architect | Axis Growth Partners tomriley@axisgrowthpartners.co  | axisgrowthpartners.co | @axisgrowthpartners INTRODUCTION The greatest misunderstanding in digital health is that payers buy outcomes. They don’t — and they never have. Digital health companies have built an entire decade of evidence strategy around: clinical outcomes engagement symptom reduction quality-of-life improvement guideline adherence patient-reported measures

By Tom Riley, Founder & Commercialization Architect | Axis Growth Partners tomriley@axisgrowthpartners.co  | axisgrowthpartners.co | @axisgrowthpartners Introduction A silent crisis is forming under digital health — and almost nobody is prepared. 2026 will mark the most significant valuation reset  in digital health’s history. Not because revenue is collapsing. Not because engagement is falling.Not because outcomes are weak. Not because interest rates are high. It will happe

By Tom Riley, Founder & Commercialization Architect | Axis Growth Partners tomriley@axisgrowthpartners.co  | axisgrowthpartners.co | @axisgrowthpartners Introduction Every payer decision — every contract, every reimbursement, every benefit approval — is driven by a set of hidden cost signatures. And almost no digital health company understands them. For decades, health-tech has obsessed over: outcomes engagement design adoption UX adherence clinical credibility But none of t

By Tom Riley, Founder & Commercialization Architect | Axis Growth Partners tomriley@axisgrowthpartners.co  | axisgrowthpartners.co | @axisgrowthpartners Introduction Every decade, healthcare undergoes a structural shift. 2030 will be the biggest one yet. The last major reset happened between 2010–2020, driven by: the ACA EHR adoption Medicare Advantage expansion the emergence of virtual care the birth of digital health as a venture category But nothing compares to what’s com

Payer Contracting, Pricing Strategy, Employer Benefit Alignment, Attribution Modeling, Evidence Standards, and The Economic Clarity Framework™ By Tom RileyFounder & Commercialization Architect | Axis Growth Partners tomriley@axisgrowthpartners.co  | axisgrowthpartners.co | @axisgrowthpartners INTRODUCTION 2026 Is the Hardest Commercial Year in a Decade — And the Biggest Opportunity for Companies That Architect for It The last seven years in health-tech were defined by one ma

Digital health is heading into a commercial extinction event — and most companies don’t see it coming. Over the last five years, venture-backed “go-to-market” orgs ballooned: CROs CCOs VPs Sales RVPs AEs Sales Engineers Outcome Analysts Pilot Managers RevOps Enablement Customer Success Client Strategy Teams Teams grew. Slides got flashier. Pipelines got bigger. But revenue didn’t. And now, 2026 is about to deliver the reckoning. **Because the truth is brutal: Digital health d

There is a crisis at the center of digital health — and almost nobody is talking about it. Companies believe they fail at payer contracting because: they need more pilots they need more outcomes they need more engagement they need better salespeople they need better case studies But the truth is blunt and unavoidable: **Digital health companies fail because they cannot prove they caused the savings they claim. This is the Attribution Crisis.** And it will define every payer,

The biggest lie in digital health is that PMPM is a “standard” pricing model. It isn’t. It never was. And new 2025–2026 evidence shows it won’t survive the next contracting cycle. For a decade, digital health companies adopted PMPM by default — not because it worked, but because it was easy. It let companies avoid the real work of: proving cost displacement tying value to utilization understanding benefit structures creating actuarial logic modeling attribution aligning with

A quiet but decisive shift is happening inside U.S. health plans — and it’s about to define the entire 2026 contracting cycle. Over the past 30 days, multiple managed-care insights have surfaced across The American Journal of Managed Care (AJMC)  and payer policy bulletins. While most digital health companies haven’t noticed, the trend is unambiguous: Payers are tightening evidence standards, scrutinizing cost-trajectory claims, and shifting benefit categories faster than at

**There is a structural truth in digital health almost no one is willing to say out loud: Companies are massively overstaffed — yet missing the one function that actually drives revenue.** In the last two years, digital health companies expanded headcount across: commercial sales market access implementation outcomes clinical ops enablement customer success “pilot teams” Yet the outcomes are identical: **Payer contracts remain slow. MA expansion stalls. Employer budgets freez

A new wave of research is rewriting the rules of health-tech commercialization — and 2026 will be the first real test. Over the last 60 days, three independent data releases — from CMS, JAMA , and Mercer — quietly confirmed what the industry has felt but not yet articulated: Digital health is about to enter the most financially rigorous contracting environment in a decade. Here’s what the research shows, in hard numbers: CMS MA 2026 Advance Notice MA plans expect to reduce lo

2026 is shaping up to be the most difficult contracting environment health-tech companies have faced since the early ACA years. Not because products aren’t working. Not because clinical outcomes have weakened. But because the economics that determine payer and employer buying behavior have shifted faster than most leadership teams realize. Across national plans, regional Blues, and employer coalitions, a single expectation is driving every renewal, procurement cycle, and budg

There is  a whisper network in Health Tech.But founders are whispering about the wrong thing. They’re debating workflow, AI, interoperability, data gravity.None of that is what will determine who survives 2026. Here’s the truth no one wants to say publicly: 2026 will be the hardest commercial year in a decade — and 90% of companies are unprepared for the economic scrutiny that’s coming. Every major payer, employer, and health system is tightening: Evidence thresholds Attribut

Over the last 60 days, something seismic has happened inside payer organizations — and almost no one in digital health is prepared for it. Multiple national + regional plans quietly updated internal guidance with a brutal new rule: “If a program doesn’t bend total medical cost within 12 months, it moves to non-renewal.” Not “promising outcomes.” Not “validated evidence.” Not “strong engagement.” Total cost curve reduction — fast — or you disappear. This is the downstream math

The last decade of digital health was dominated by pilots that never scaled — not because the ideas were wrong, but because incentives, data, and infrastructure weren’t aligned. Now, coming out of #HLTH2025 and #ViVE2025, one message is clear: 2026 healthtech commercialization is about connection, not experimentation. We’re moving from isolated innovation to connected-care commercialization — where clinical evidence is translated into economic clarity across payers, employers

UnitedHealthcare just detonated the Remote Monitoring model.Starting January 2026, RPM reimbursement for diabetes, hypertension, and COPD disappears  — only heart failure and hypertensive disorders of pregnancy remain covered. ( UHC Policy Source ) For digital-health and medtech leaders, this isn’t a billing update. It’s a commercialization earthquake . For five years, RPM sat at the center of payer contracts — an easy proof-of-value wedge for wearables, sensors, and virtual-