Innovu turns price transparency data into employer-ready network insights with Turquoise
Outcomes
Innovu now brings objective, market-based reimbursement benchmarks to every client conversation
Supports enhanced negotiation with carrier and TPA through data
Identifies pricing outliers faster and potential savings opportunities
Summary
Innovu built its reputation on turning complex benefits data into actionable intelligence. Its platform ingests claims, eligibility, biometrics, HRIS data, workers’ compensation, point solutions, and industry benchmarks to give advisors and plan sponsors to manage plan performance, identify cost drivers, and proactively mitigate risk. But even the richest dataset has historically faced a structural limitation: the lack of visibility into negotiated carrier-provider rates and real market pricing dynamics. Federal transparency legislation changed that and created a pivotal opportunity by making previously inaccessible pricing data publicly available. Innovu partnered with Turquoise to put that data to work, operationalizing publicly posted rates within Innovu’s analytics environment, completing the pricing picture for benchmarking and carrier evaluations, and investigating outliers on high-cost procedures to support plan design changes on provider networks. Together, the partnership converts transparency from a regulatory requirement into a competitive advantage.
The problem
Innovu empowers advisors with a data infrastructure designed for advisors to guide self-insured clients through an increasingly complex healthcare market. Led by Alex Healion, Vice President of Client Experience, a 15-person team of analysts and relationship managers partners directly with advisors and employer groups to uncover key cost drivers and translate insights into actionable renewal and plan optimization strategies.
At its core, the infrastructure is designed to turn raw data into measurable impact, identifying opportunities to improve outcomes while lowering costs. In many cases, this means helping clients make smarter purchasing decisions by analyzing provider care by quality and cost.
Before working with Turquoise, Innovu’s client strategies were constrained by limited access to comprehensive market pricing data. The platform was built on a foundation, including medical and pharmacy claims, eligibility data, and advanced analytics, but an opportunity emerged to extend those core service offerings into broader reimbursement benchmarks with Turquoise’s data.
Because Innovu’s loaded claims data reflects a client’s specific network arrangements, it provides deep visibility into existing plan performance but lacks context for how those rates compare to the wider market. Given the power that their current platform provided in terms of those comprehensive plan insights, the emergence of the transparency data created an opportunity to equip advisors with visibility into the broader healthcare landscape.
“We were already providing clients with actionable intelligence from claims data that strengthened their plan strategies, but there was always a missing component,” said Healion. “Turquoise amplifies that strength by extending visibility beyond what claims alone can show.”
Advisors and employers were often forced into a lengthy, resource-intensive decision-making process, analyzing Innovu reporting alongside carrier data and conducting full repricing exercises each renewal cycle. While the data drove meaningful action, the process was complex and repeated annually without complete market visibility.
“While it was encouraging to see advisors taking action based on the data, it was still a challenging process each year, especially given that no one had full access to all the information needed to make the best decisions for plan participants,” said Healion.
Clients consistently asked critical questions that paid claims data alone could not fully answer: Are we paying a competitive rate for these services? Is this the best care site for our members? “That’s the answer everyone is looking for,” Healion added. “We had part of the answer, and Turquoise helped us complete it.”
Innovu now uses Turquoise to complete the picture for customers
When Innovu evaluated options for adding pricing data to their platform, two things made Turquoise the clear choice: the quality of the data normalization work, and the alignment between teams. Price transparency data is, in Healion's words, "a beast" - massive, complex, and inconsistent across payers and providers, and notoriously difficult to operationalize.
"The sheer size of it, the sheer complexity - and then you're working with different providers and payers across the country," said Healion. "Being able to normalize that and make it clean to fit into a system like ours, that was the first time we've seen it actually be a possibility."
The cultural fit mattered just as much. Healion described his team's experience working with Turquoise as one of clear objectives, responsive support, and continuous collaboration on data quality. When Innovu's analysts spot something unusual in the data, they bring it directly back to the Turquoise team. "We have a strong cross-team alignment with Turquoise to address everything from product support to quality to data ingestion,” said Healion. "The support we get on that side is fantastic and really keeps us moving to support clients at the end of the day."
The team now uses Turquoise across two core areas:
Network evaluation and carrier comparison: Innovu initially deployed the Turquoise data as an investigative layer alongside claims - benchmarking client paid amounts against publicly posted rates to evaluate network competitiveness. One example stood out - An advisor and employer client were exploring the creation of a preferred provider program within their existing network and were deciding between two competing in-state providers. Their question to Innovu was simple: Which provider offers the more competitive rates? Healion's team leveraged Turquoise’s transparency data to analyze publicly posted rates across the key diagnostic service categories. The findings were clear: “Without access to public hospital payer data, we wouldn’t have been able to fully support the client’s decision,” said Helaion. “We could have provided guidance based on their plan utilization, but that would have missed the critical market benchmark component. The transparency data gave us the complete picture.”
Site-of-care analysis: Innovu has always evaluated site-of-care utilization through claims data, identifying opportunities to reduce spend by shifting services to more cost-effective settings, such as from outpatient hospital departments to physician offices, or from physician offices to independent infusion centers. However, inherent claim-to-claim variability made it difficult to benchmark those recommendations with complete confidence. The integration of Turquoise rate data transformed that analysis. "Not only can we evaluate a client’s paid claims experience, we can now layer in public rate data to show exactly how pricing compares across the providers that their members are actively using” said Healion. The impact has been consistent across high-cost categories, including outpatient surgeries, laboratory services, imaging, and drug infusions.
“Access to hospital and payer transparency data has made our site-of-care strategy significantly more powerful,” said Healion.
The outcome
The integration of Turquoise data has significantly strengthened Innovu’s data infrastructure and the reporting capabilities delivered to clients. Paid claims and publicly posted rates now sit side by side within a unified reporting model, eliminating the need for multiple data sources and external repricing cycles.
Together, Innovu and Turquoise have also developed standardized, automated transparency reports embedded directly into the platform. This expansion gives Innovu’s team, advisors, and employer clients direct access to actionable market pricing intelligence in real time.
"It opens up what my team can analyze and support clients with,” said Healion. "There's significantly more we can act on, and most importantly, more that advisors and employers can use to make informed decision and drive the right strategy.”
For advisory firms, the impact scales across their entire book of business. Access to transparency data creates infrastructure that can be implemented at the firm level, elevating consistency and sophistication across all client relationships. “It impacts their distribution strategy, client retention, and overall execution,” Healion noted. “It truly touches every layer of their business.”
For Healion, the most rewarding outcome is seeing the data create value across the full Ecosystem, from platform efficiency and team performance to advisor differentiation and employer decision-making. Where Innovu once served primarily as a data facilitator, the organization now operates as a strategic partner at the table when critical plan decisions are made. “I’m fortunate to sit at the center and see how it strengthens our product and operational efficiency, but more importantly, how it translates into value for our team, our advisors, and the employers they serve,” Healion said. “Partnering with Turquoise was a no-brainer. Their expertise in navigating transparency data has become integral to how we deliver value every day.”
