Everything starts with building trust, delivered with Chess Strategy at Checkers Speed.™ The approach is part of the offering.
What we do
Six possibilities.
Most engagements start in one of these buckets and draw on the others as the work develops. Cards flip on click.
Product Strategy & Innovation
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Product strategy and innovation
We generate new product ideas, extensions, and fresh avenues of exploration. Creativity is the part most teams underrate, so we come at a problem from angles an internal roadmap rarely leaves room for, drawing on what we see across the wider market. We pressure-test which ones are worth the effort to build versus others that only look good on a slide.
We map how each idea ladders up to where the business is going, and connect product strategy back to the organization’s broader vision. As AI resets what is possible, we help you find the moves that keep you ahead rather than reacting to everyone else.
Research & Insight
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Research and insight
We run primary research: interviews with industry leaders, synthesis of what they tell us, and qualitative insight combined with platform and data points to explain market impact in plain language.
We go straight to the people who shape a market, ask the questions others skip, and turn hours of conversation into a clear read on where things are heading. We package insights in a way that leaders can act on, whether that means a board-ready synthesis, a field guide, or a reference work entire teams leverage to enhance operations.
Messaging & Narrative Strategy
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Messaging and narrative strategy
We take in a workflow, a team, a problem, or a situation, and find the right message, story, and framing to raise the level of trust an organization holds. Trust is the through-line of everything we do, so we start by understanding what an audience needs to hear and believe, then build the language, positioning, and narrative that gets them there.
We craft how an organization talks about itself and its work, turn complex situations into clear, human stories, and shape the marketing narratives that carry them to market, so your team can walk into any room and connect in conversation with confidence.
Workflow & Experience Design
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Workflow and experience design
We study workflows end to end and redesign them for efficiency. We follow the real path a patient or an employee takes, not the one on the org chart, and map entire workflows in a given area, applying first-principles thinking, curiosity, critical thinking, and real-world prompt engineering.
Then we find where time, trust, and value leak out and close the gaps, sometimes with new technology, often by simply removing steps that never needed to be there.
Audience & Executive Outreach
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Audience building and executive outreach
We build targeted lists of companies and executives by title and role, shape the messaging of what we bring to them, and reach out directly to sell or launch specific new products and programs.
We identify exactly who needs to hear about a new offering, craft outreach that earns a reply, and open doors with the right decision-makers. It is the difference between a launch that hopes to be noticed and one that lands in the right inboxes and gets a meeting.
Speaking & Thought Leadership
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Speaking and thought leadership
We take speaking engagements: keynotes, fireside chats, panels, and podcast appearances. We also design and build panels from scratch. We show up prepared to say something worth remembering, and we use the stage to build relationships that matter long after the session ends.
We can walk into a conference, read the themes in the room, meet the right people, and bring a clear read back to leaders on what the market is talking about and how their messaging should evolve.
Who we serve
Organizations that are building toward extraordinary experiences and results.
We work with healthcare organizations and employers that want to improve the experience of patients, employees, and the people moving through the healthcare ecosystem. Every engagement starts in the same place: building trust. We help organizations earn it, deepen it, and keep it.
Healthcare technology companies
Healthcare practices and health systems
Healthcare practices
Health systems
Health plans
Self-insured employers
Other consulting firms
We bridge the gap between where you are today and where you need to go.
How we work
The method underneath every engagement.
We ask the hard questions
We ask the industry the challenging questions because we want a deep understanding of how things really work. That curiosity, and the courage to keep asking, is the engine of everything we produce.
We use first principles
We strip a problem down to what is true, not what is assumed or inherited, and rebuild from there. It is how we get to the bottom of things fast and find where the value sits.
We bridge the gap
Between where a company or product is today and where it needs to go. A Thunderbolt engagement is the move from one to the other.
Where we shine
We are product innovators, market surveyors, narrative builders, workflow designers, and trusted advisors, and we bring all of it to every engagement.
Client stories
Organizations that trust us.
Payerset
Payerset is a healthcare price transparency company, and we are building out its research arm. Our aim is to create insightful, novel perspectives that advance the education and traction around price transparency in healthcare. We also produce content the company and the wider industry can use to push the field forward. The mission underneath it is to democratize access to price transparency data and put it in the hands of patients, providers, and employers so they can make more informed decisions when navigating the healthcare system.
We started by understanding the destination of content that stands out, then tested it as we put together our first flagship piece. This was a comprehensive 25-page field guide that helped put the price transparency progression in perspective, with printed copies first appearing at the annual HFMA conference in June 2026. It traced how the data and the industry have evolved, compared the machine-readable files published by hospitals and insurers, showed how to benchmark rates by bundles instead of single codes, laid out a contract negotiation playbook, and looked ahead at where the field is going. From there, we help produce the monthly feature pieces for the Price Transparency Project, a Payerset brand. We also write research and feature reports that leave the dull, traditional format behind, channeling real data and insight, asking the hard questions, and staying honest about what still has no answer. We create content for social channels, run several other initiatives to amplify the conversation, and keep showing up at events and conferences to build the network. All of it is aimed at content sharp enough to hold attention and grow the audience for price transparency.
A lot of the craft is making a complicated subject simple. Price transparency data is dense, and we work to turn it into something clear, useful, and easy to follow, for newcomers and for people who have spent years in the industry. Part of our work involves hunting for the angle other people miss. When we review data pulls for a report, we pay as much attention to what the data will not tell us as to what it will. We recently pointed out that not being able to find something in the data is itself a finding. Sometimes the absence of an answer is the insight.
QC-Health
QC-Health is a public benefit corporation whose tools reach care decisions the moment they are made, connecting clinicians, health systems, and stakeholders around the insights and incentives that put patients first. We are leading outreach for a program initially focused on two disease states, helping patients improve their medication adherence, access the right drug at the right price, and keep their prescribers informed. We were brought in, given initial context on the program, and used market signals to help shape it along the way.
We mapped the pharmacy benefit manager landscape to build a list of transparent PBMs to contact. From there, we improved the messaging in real time as we helped take the program to market. We shaped some of the program’s materials, including prescriber-facing landing pages, and contributed to marketing pieces that explain the program to outside audiences, including a one-page overview, a frequently asked questions document, and several other resources. To fuel the outreach, we built and curated a CRM of pharmacy benefit managers, executives, and the right contacts inside those companies. This work requires collaborating with the QC-Health team across every function to build momentum. The company’s patient-first focus makes extending the initiative a priority to as many partners as possible who focus on improving the patient and prescriber experience. It’s engaging, fun work, and we’re glad to be part of it.
The Marshall Allen Project
The Marshall Allen Project continues the work of Marshall Allen, the award-winning investigative journalist and author of Never Pay the First Bill, who taught patients how to stand up to a healthcare system that too often overcharges them. We began writing for the project in 2025, with our first article published that February. We tell patient victory stories that reach a readership of roughly 10,000. These stories illustrate the accounts of people who were taken advantage of by the system and found a way to fight back and win. Beyond the page, we appear on podcasts and host community conversations where we share the strategies and tactics Marshall Allen championed.
Each story starts with a lead. We hear directly from patients, and we reach out to patient advocates and others in the community to surface the experiences that need to be told. From there, we interview the patient about their care and their bills, building the narrative from their own account. We review the itemized bills, insurance paperwork, and other records they share, so we can pinpoint the details, write the story accurately, and illustrate exactly how they pushed back and won. We publish stories and stay engaged with the online audience and the wider patient advocacy community, carrying Marshall Allen’s legacy and the tactics he taught to the people who need them most.
We partnered with Clay Street Group on a multi-month engagement for an international medical terminology standards organization that wanted to explore new market opportunities. As artificial intelligence reshapes how clinical data is created and used, the organization needed a clear read on where it could stay nimble, where the gaps were, and where new revenue streams might come from. We worked closely with its C-suite executives, reporting back to them regularly, and connected with stakeholders around the world to assess the market landscape.
We helped explore, refine, and validate the organization’s existing value proposition, and gave an overview of market dynamics and emerging opportunities. We pinpointed the core capabilities the organization could build on to diversify, identified growth themes worth pursuing, and mapped out product possibilities that could support expansion. Much of this came from primary research. We curated the list of people to interview, built the question sets around the topic areas that mattered most to the firm, and ran the interviews across a range of stakeholder groups.
The deliverables split into two streams, value proposition and revenue growth. For value proposition, we reviewed the organization's existing customer value proposition materials and summarized our findings. We then laid out the value propositions that landed hardest with each audience, backed by evidence and research. For revenue growth, we delivered a stakeholder insights summary document and a product validation survey toolkit, grounded in thematic analysis across the stakeholder groups we interviewed. Both streams paid particular attention to where artificial intelligence opens new applications and opportunities for the organization.
National Science Foundation I-Corps
The National Science Foundation I-Corps program was where we got our start. We earned both regional and national I-Corps grants from the National Science Foundation and managed the grant budget that funded the work. Initially focused on price transparency, our work evolved to study the systemic lack of transparency and misaligned financial incentives that drive up the cost of healthcare. The multi-month regional program gave us the traction and insight to assemble a Princeton University based team and principal investigator that carried us into the national program. We led our national cohort in total interviews, recording 294 during the seven-week national program, and completed more than 600 interviews across the full I-Corps journey. We traveled to industry conferences across the country as part of that effort, including the national HIMSS and HFMA conferences. That work taught us how money moves through healthcare and built the foundational network we still rely on today.
Our team won the People’s Choice Award at the close of the national cohort, chosen out of a dozen teams after our final presentation. In that period and the work that followed, we spoke at a nationally recognized conference hosted by a coalition of self-insured employers that represents more than 150 companies, covering 4 million lives and spending over $15 billion on healthcare. We have been featured on three industry podcasts hosted by prominent organizations, including Capital Rx, now Judi Health. And we were invited to an exclusive two-day healthcare transformation conference at Princeton University, alongside executives and leaders from across the industry.
