Caliber is an independent billing governance layer for self-funded employers. We verify that high-cost healthcare claims are accurate before the employer pays them.
Every self-funded employer holds high-cost claims for 14-60 days before releasing payment. During that hold, nobody independently verifies that what was billed matches what was delivered. The TPA processes the claim. The TPA runs automated edits. The TPA releases payment. The TPA is both processor and verifier. That's the structural gap.
Caliber fills the hold window with independent verification. Claims above the employer's defined threshold are reviewed by external billing governance specialists against coding guidelines, provider contracts, clinical documentation, and delivery evidence. The result is a Billing Governance Certificate documenting what was verified, what was accurate, and what wasn't.
One-sentence version: The claim was processed. It was about to be paid. Nobody verified it. Caliber verifies it.
Caliber is the third leg of a governance platform alongside Cadence (continuation governance for specialty pharmacy) and Curated (episode governance for behavioral health). Each product governs a different dimension of employer health plan spend. Each is structurally independent. Each produces a governance artifact for the same buyer.
Cadence: "The prescription was approved. It refilled for a year. Nobody governed the continuation."
Curated: "The member needed care. They were sent wherever. Nobody measured whether it worked."
Caliber: "The claim was processed. It was about to be paid. Nobody verified it."
A Fortune 500 company pays PwC or Deloitte to independently verify its financial statements. Nobody questions why. The auditor doesn't run the company. They verify that what's reported matches what happened. The independence is the point.
That same Fortune 500 company pays $200M in annual health plan claims through a TPA. The TPA processes the claims. The TPA runs automated edits (ClaimsXten, etc.) to catch coding errors. The TPA releases payment. The TPA sends the employer a report showing what was paid.
Nobody independently verifies any of it.
The TPA is processor, editor, and de facto auditor of its own work. That's not independence. It's not even oversight. It's a structural conflict that every self-funded employer lives with because no alternative exists.
Retrospective audit firms (Cotiviti, HMS, Optum) review claims after payment and attempt recovery. Average timeline: 12-18 months. Average recovery: 1-2% of spend reviewed. The employer gets a fraction of the overpayment back, years later, after the money has already left.
Billing inaccuracy doesn't stay in the finance department. It surfaces as higher premiums, higher deductibles, narrower networks, and reduced benefits for the people the plan is supposed to protect. The employer absorbs the overpayment. The members absorb the consequences.
Caliber doesn't audit after the fact. Caliber verifies during the existing payment-hold window, before the employer pays. The TPA already holds high-cost claims for 14-60 days. That window is currently empty. Caliber fills it with independent verification.
The carpenter's rule applied to healthcare claims. Everybody else measures once — or doesn't measure at all. Caliber measures twice: the TPA processes the claim, and Caliber independently verifies it before the employer pays.
We expect first-cycle discrepancy rates of 4-6% on high-cost claims above $25,000. This estimate is grounded in multiple independent sources:
The industry-wide range spans 3-10%, but the upper end includes intentional fraud, which Caliber is not designed to detect. Our expected range — 4-6% — reflects structural billing inaccuracy: wrong codes, wrong rates, wrong duration, wrong credentials. Not criminal behavior. Structural errors that cost the employer real money.
For a 15,000-life employer with $80M in annual claims, 4-6% inaccuracy on high-cost claims = $800K-$1.5M in overpayment annually.
Common inaccuracy types by expected prevalence and average discrepancy:
| Type | Check | Est. Prevalence | Avg. Discrepancy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Upcoding | CODEVAL | 2-4% of claims | $3,000 - $8,000 |
| LOS discrepancy | DURVAL | 1-2% of claims | $8,000 - $25,000 |
| Duplicate billing | DUPCHECK | 0.5-1% of claims | Full claim amount |
| Rate error | RATEVAL | 1-3% of claims | $2,000 - $5,000 |
| Credential mismatch | CREDVAL | 0.5-1% of claims | $3,000 - $10,000 |
| Unbundling | BUNDLEVAL | 1-2% of claims | $2,000 - $6,000 |
| Phantom / incomplete | SVCVAL | 0.5-1% of claims | $5,000 - $30,000 |
Evidence status: Industry sources cited above. Not yet validated by Caliber's own verification cycles. The first pilot — the Caliber Baseline Study — will establish the actual rate. See Section 11.
TPAs use automated pre-payment editing tools (ClaimsXten, Optum, Cotiviti) that catch coding errors — missing modifiers, invalid code combinations, duplicate submissions. These tools are good at what they do. They catch approximately 5-8% of claims for editing.
What they don't do: verify that the services billed actually occurred at the level documented. Did the 21-day NICU stay actually last 21 days? Did the $85K spinal fusion include the post-operative physical therapy sessions that were billed? Did the provider who billed at attending-physician rates actually perform the procedure, or did a resident? Automated edits check code logic. They don't check delivery truth.
The TPA has no economic incentive to find these discrepancies. TPA revenue is based on claims processed — volume, not accuracy. The employer is the one who loses when inaccurate claims are paid. The incentives diverge.
The retrospective claims audit industry is worth approximately $3B annually. Firms review paid claims, identify overpayments, and negotiate recovery from providers. Average recovery timeline: 12-18 months. Recovery rate: 50-70% of identified overpayments (providers dispute, negotiate, or disappear). Net recovery to the employer: 1-2% of claims reviewed.
Pre-payment verification eliminates the recovery problem entirely. If you don't overpay, you don't need to recover. The economic advantage is derived: retrospective recovery yields 50-70% of identified overpayments, after 12-18 months of administrative cost (provider disputes, appeals, collections). Net recovery to the employer is approximately $0.25 for every $1 of overpayment identified, after audit fees and recovery costs. Prevention retains the full dollar. The effective ratio is approximately 4:1 — $1 of prevented overpayment is worth $4 of attempted recovery.
Every TPA holds claims above a defined threshold (typically $10-50K) for additional review before releasing payment. This hold period ranges from 14-60 days depending on the TPA and the claim amount. The hold exists because high-cost claims represent disproportionate financial risk to the employer.
During the hold, the TPA performs its own review — medical necessity, benefit determination, provider contract compliance. Nobody else reviews. The hold window is available for independent verification without extending the payment timeline or interfering with the TPA's workflow.
Evidence status: Operational fact, confirmed across multiple TPA relationships. The specific hold thresholds and durations vary by TPA and employer contract.
Self-funded employers already pay for retrospective claims audit ($50-200K annually). They already pay for stop-loss reinsurance ($1-3M annually). They already pay for benefits consulting ($100-300K annually). Independent pre-payment verification is a natural extension of the governance stack they're already buying.
The value proposition is direct: pay $X for Caliber, save $3-5X in prevented overpayments. The ROI conversation is the same one that sells Cadence and Curated — documented, measurable, independently verifiable.
Evidence status: Market pattern from adjacent governance purchases. Not yet validated by a signed Caliber contract.
Every Caliber verification cycle follows a published, versioned methodology. The standard defines what triggers review, who reviews, what they check, and what the deliverable contains.
A weekly or bi-weekly extract of claims in hold status above the employer's defined threshold. Minimum data fields:
| Field | Required | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Claim ID | Yes | Unique identifier for tracking |
| Member ID (de-identified) | Yes | Episode linkage |
| Provider / Facility | Yes | Credentialing and contract verification |
| Procedure codes (CPT/HCPCS) | Yes | Coding accuracy review |
| Diagnosis codes (ICD-10) | Yes | Medical appropriateness linkage |
| Billed amount | Yes | Rate and contract compliance |
| Service dates | Yes | Duration and timing verification |
| Place of service | Yes | Facility vs professional billing |
| Provider contract rates | Optional | Contracted rate comparison |
| Clinical documentation | Optional | Delivery evidence (when available) |
| Tier | Claim Amount | Review Scope |
|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 | $25,000+ | Full verification: coding, billing, documentation, contract compliance |
| Tier 2 | $10,000 - $24,999 | Coding and billing verification. Documentation review if flagged. |
| Tier 3 | Below $10,000 | Automated screening only. Manual review if algorithmically flagged. |
Thresholds are configurable per employer. The default recommended threshold for full verification is $25,000, which captures approximately 70-80% of the employer's high-cost claims spend in 5-10% of total claim volume.
Claims are reviewed by external billing governance specialists. Minimum qualifications: CPC (Certified Professional Coder), CCS (Certified Coding Specialist), or RHIA (Registered Health Information Administrator) with 3+ years of claims review experience. Reviewers must be external to the employer, the TPA, and the provider.
Each claim receives one of four determinations:
| Determination | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Verified | Claim is accurate. Pay as submitted. |
| Adjust | Claim contains correctable inaccuracies. Recommended adjustment documented. |
| Hold | Claim requires additional documentation from provider before verification can complete. |
| Escalate | Claim contains material discrepancies that require employer/TPA decision. Caliber documents the findings and recommended action. The employer decides whether to pay, adjust, or withhold payment. Caliber is advisory-only — never the decision-maker. |
| TPA Hold Window | Tier 1 Turnaround | Tier 2 Turnaround |
|---|---|---|
| 14-60 days (standard) | 10 business days | 7 business days |
| 14-21 days (short hold) | 5 business days | 3 business days |
Returns to TPA with determination, recommended action, and supporting documentation. The hold window length is confirmed during onboarding. Caliber guarantees turnaround within the window or the claim passes through unreviewed — the employer never pays late because of Caliber.
When a claim receives an Adjust or Escalate determination:
Caliber never communicates directly with providers. Never contacts members. Never issues payment instructions. The employer and TPA retain full authority over the payment decision. Caliber produces the intelligence. Same structural principle as Cadence: advisory-only.
Caliber is positioned to the TPA as an ERISA fiduciary best practice, not an indictment of TPA performance. The framing: "The plan sponsor is adding independent billing verification as part of its fiduciary governance program." This is analogous to a company hiring external auditors — it doesn't mean the CFO is suspected of fraud. It means the board requires independent verification. Most TPAs understand this framing because they serve ERISA-governed plans and know the fiduciary obligations their clients carry.
Caliber's findings, when they identify TPA editing gaps, are documented privately in the Billing Governance Certificate. They are not shared with the TPA's other clients. The relationship between Caliber and the TPA is professional, not adversarial. The TPA's editing catches code-level errors. Caliber verifies delivery truth. They are complementary layers, not competing reviews.
At the end of each quarterly cycle, Caliber produces a Billing Governance Certificate documenting:
The Certificate is sealed, versioned, and immutable. It serves as evidence for stop-loss renewal conversations, ERISA fiduciary documentation, and board reporting.
Five entities touch a high-cost claim before the employer pays it. None can independently verify it:
The TPA processed the claim. Asking the TPA to verify it is asking them to audit themselves. Their automated edits catch code-level errors. They don't verify delivery truth. Their economic incentive is throughput, not accuracy.
Stop-loss reviews high-cost claims to determine reimbursement obligations. They're checking whether the claim exceeds the specific deductible and whether the covered services are within policy. They're not checking whether the services were delivered accurately. Their review serves their financial interest, not the employer's billing accuracy.
Self-audit of billing is a compliance obligation, not an independent governance function. Providers have economic incentive to bill at the highest defensible level. Internal compliance catches egregious errors. It doesn't produce an independent verification artifact for the employer.
Consultants benchmark the employer's spend against market data. They report that "your per-member cost is 8% above median." They don't verify individual claims. Benchmarking tells you the total looks high. It doesn't tell you which specific claims are wrong.
A manufacturing company, a retailer, a bank — they don't have clinical billing expertise. They rely on the TPA and the consultant. Neither provides independent claim-level verification.
The structural requirement: Independent verification of high-cost claims requires an entity that is (1) independent of the TPA, (2) independent of the provider, (3) independent of the stop-loss carrier, and (4) operating on a published, versioned methodology with external reviewers and a sealed artifact. Caliber clears all four.
1. PEPM governance fee ($2-5/employee/month). The employer pays for access to independent billing verification infrastructure. Covers reviewer capacity, methodology, reporting, and the Billing Governance Certificate. Volume-tiered:
| Tier | Covered Lives | PEPM |
|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 | Under 10,000 | $4.00 - $5.00 |
| Tier 2 | 10,000 - 25,000 | $3.00 - $4.00 |
| Tier 3 | 25,000 - 50,000 | $2.50 - $3.00 |
| Tier 4 | 50,000+ | $2.00 - $2.50 |
2. Prevented-overpayment share (15-20% of verified savings). When Caliber identifies a billing discrepancy that the employer would have paid without verification, Caliber retains 15-20% of the prevented overpayment. The remaining 80-85% stays with the employer. Savings are documented at the line-item level and independently verifiable against claims data. Not modeled. Not estimated.
Dispute resolution: The employer has 10 business days to review and dispute any finding. Disputed findings are reviewed by an independent third-party reviewer. If upheld, the prevented-overpayment share applies. If overturned, it doesn't. Caliber never earns on disputed findings unless the dispute is independently resolved in Caliber's favor. This protects the employer and forces Caliber to be accurate.
A 15,000-life employer generating $80M in annual claims. High-cost claims above $25K: approximately $21M across 350 claims per year (average $60K per claim).
| Check | Est. Flagged Claims | Avg. Discrepancy | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| CODEVAL (upcoding) | 10 (2.9%) | $5,500 | $55,000 |
| DURVAL (LOS) | 5 (1.4%) | $16,500 | $82,500 |
| DUPCHECK (duplicate) | 3 (0.9%) | $60,000 | $180,000 |
| RATEVAL (rate) | 7 (2.0%) | $3,500 | $24,500 |
| CREDVAL (credential) | 3 (0.9%) | $6,500 | $19,500 |
| BUNDLEVAL (unbundling) | 5 (1.4%) | $4,000 | $20,000 |
| SVCVAL (triggered) | 2 (0.6%) | $17,500 | $35,000 |
| Total | 35 (10% by count) | $416,500 |
Note: ~10% of claims contain at least one discrepancy, but total dollars affected represent ~2% of reviewed spend ($416K of $21M). Some claims have multiple findings. The per-dollar discrepancy rate is lower than the per-claim rate because most findings are partial adjustments, not full-claim errors. DUPCHECK is the exception — duplicates are full-claim recoveries.
| Revenue Metric | Conservative (2%) | Moderate (4%) |
|---|---|---|
| PEPM revenue ($3.50 x 15K x 12) | $630,000 | $630,000 |
| Total discrepancies identified | $416,500 | $840,000 |
| Prevented-overpayment share (17.5%) | $72,888 | $147,000 |
| Total revenue per employer | $702,888 | $777,000 |
| Direct cost (reviewers, infrastructure, pro-rata ops) | $350,000 | $380,000 |
| Contribution margin | $352,888 | $397,000 |
First client: $2.00 PEPM only. No prevented-overpayment share. 90-day term. Prove the discrepancy rate. Produce the first Billing Governance Certificate. If the data doesn't justify continuation, walk away.
Second client: $3.00 PEPM + 10% prevented-overpayment share.
Third client onward: Full pricing.
A 15,000-life employer paying $3.50 PEPM ($630K/year) for independent claims verification. Prevented overpayment: $416K-$840K. The employer keeps 82.5% of prevented overpayment ($343K-$693K). Net cost after retained savings: $287K or less. ROI: 1.5-2.2x in year one. This does not include the stop-loss premium reduction from documented billing governance, which is a second savings not modeled here.
| Entity | What They Do | Why They're Not Caliber |
|---|---|---|
| Cotiviti | Payment accuracy for health plans. Pre- and post-payment editing. $1.6B acquisition by Verscend. | Sells to payers, not employers. The health plan's payment accuracy vendor is optimizing the plan's economics, not the employer's. Different buyer, different incentive. |
| Optum / Change Healthcare | ClaimsXten pre-payment editing. Largest claims processing infrastructure in the US. | Automated edits catch code-level errors. Don't verify delivery truth. Part of UHG — structural conflict when the same company processes claims and audits them. |
| HMS (now Gainwell) | Cost containment and payment integrity for government and commercial payers. | Retrospective. Recovery-based revenue model. 12-18 month timeline. Sells to payers. |
| Retrospective audit firms | Post-payment claims review and recovery. | After the money is gone. Recovery rates are 50-70% of identified amounts. The employer waits over a year. Caliber prevents the overpayment from happening. |
| TPA internal review | Built-in claims editing and high-cost claim review. | Self-audit. No independence. Throughput incentive, not accuracy incentive. |
| Turquoise Health | Price transparency data. Shows what prices should be. | Data product, not verification service. Tells you the price is wrong. Doesn't stop you from paying it. |
The competitive wedge: Every existing payment integrity company sells to health plans. Caliber sells to the self-funded employer. The employer is the one writing the check. The employer is the one with fiduciary duty under ERISA. The employer is the one who loses when inaccurate claims are paid. Nobody built independent pre-payment verification for the entity that actually pays.
Caliber does not replace the employer's existing retrospective claims audit. It makes the audit smaller. The largest errors — the $30K LOS discrepancy, the $60K duplicate — are caught before payment. The retrospective audit firm reviews what's left. This is a complement sell, not a displacement sell. Benefits consultants can recommend Caliber alongside their existing audit firm relationship without conflict.
Benefits consultants are the primary distribution channel. When a consultant introduces Caliber to their client, the consultant participates through a referral structure: first-year referral fee of 5-8% of PEPM revenue, with ongoing advisory fees for multi-year engagements. Caliber is positioned as a tool the consultant brings to the renewal conversation — "we've added independent claims verification to your governance stack" — which strengthens the consultant's value to the client. The consultant who introduces Caliber holds a differentiated renewal story that competitors can't match.
Every verified claim produces billing accuracy data. After two years of verification cycles across multiple employers, Caliber holds:
This dataset compounds with every cycle. It's collected independently, at the claim level, with documented methodology. Nobody else has it because nobody else is doing pre-payment verification for self-funded employers.
Caliber's credential verification (CREDVAL) produces staffing-level data: which providers bill at physician rates, which use NP/PA-delivered services, and where the mismatch is systematic. When combined with Curated's clinical outcome data for behavioral health episodes, this enables a question nobody else can answer: does staffing-level accuracy correlate with clinical outcomes?
If a $45K residential SUD program bills at psychiatrist rates but uses NPs for medication management, and that program's PHQ-9 delta is 3 points lower than programs with actual psychiatrist involvement — that's a finding with implications for network curation, pricing, and quality measurement. Caliber produces the billing truth. Curated produces the outcome truth. Together, they produce something neither can produce alone.
Stop-loss carriers reimburse claims above the specific deductible. If those claims are inaccurate, the carrier overpays. The carrier has limited ability to verify — they see the claim, the TPA's adjudication, and the EOB. They don't independently verify delivery.
An employer with a Caliber Billing Governance Certificate is demonstrably lower risk:
The thesis: stop-loss carriers who recognize the Billing Governance Certificate will offer preferential renewal terms, because verified claims reduce their reimbursement risk. This is the same thesis Cadence holds with the Governance Certificate for specialty pharmacy — the governance artifact becomes a risk differentiation tool.
An employer who presents their stop-loss carrier with three governance artifacts — Cadence (specialty pharmacy continuation is governed), Curated (BH episodes are routed to quality programs with measured outcomes), and Caliber (high-cost claims are independently verified before payment) — is the best-documented risk in the market. No other employer can produce this package. The combination creates negotiating power that no single product provides alone.
The cost of acquiring a self-funded employer client is $20-50K (sales cycle, consultant relationships, pilot, legal review). That cost is incurred once. Cross-selling the second and third products to the same client is near zero incremental acquisition cost.
| Configuration | Revenue per Employer (Year 2) | CAC |
|---|---|---|
| Cadence alone | ~$300K (Year 2 / ~5K governed specialty members at $5 PMPM) | $20-50K |
| Curated alone | ~$775K (Year 2 / 10K lives) | $20-50K |
| Caliber alone | ~$700K (Year 2 / 15K lives) | $20-50K |
| Triad (all three) | ~$1.8M (same employer, sizes vary by product) | $20-50K (once) |
At 10 employer clients on the full triad: $18M+ in annual revenue from a shared sales motion, shared buyer relationship, and shared governance thesis. LTV per client triples while CAC stays flat. That's the platform economics that makes the triad a fundamentally different business than three separate companies.
Cadence revenue is priced per governed specialty member (PMPM), not per total employee. A 15,000-employee employer may have 2,000-5,000 governed specialty members depending on plan design and formulary. Curated and Caliber are priced per employee (PEPM). The triad total varies with employer size and specialty population.
Total PEPM exposure: For a 15,000-employee employer, maximum annual governance spend across all three products: approximately $1.2-1.8M before any savings materialize. This is transparent. Hiding the total and letting the buyer discover it is a trust destroyer.
Instead of three separate certificates, offer a unified Governance Portfolio — one document, three sections, one risk profile. The stop-loss carrier sees a single artifact covering specialty pharmacy continuation, BH episode outcomes, and high-cost claims verification. The employer presents one story. The consultant recommends one vendor relationship.
Lead with Caliber. It has the simplest value proposition ("we verify your claims before you pay"), the fastest ROI demonstration (first Billing Governance Certificate at 90 days), and the least behavioral change required from the employer — they're already holding claims. Caliber opens the door. Cadence and Curated walk through it.
Sequence: Caliber pilot (90 days) → demonstrate value → introduce Cadence for specialty pharmacy (same client, same renewal conversation) → introduce Curated for BH episodes (same client, different clinical category). By month 12, the employer has three governance layers and a Governance Portfolio for their stop-loss renewal.
Cadence has validated its methodology across 65,234 patients in three independent cohorts, including the DURA study (30,734 patients). Caliber has industry citations. The gap is known. The first pilot closes it.
Single self-funded employer. 300-400 high-cost claims above $25K. Full BGS v1.0 methodology applied. 90-day verification cycle. Every claim reviewed across all seven checks.
Based on industry sources: 4-6% of high-cost claims will contain at least one billing inaccuracy. DURVAL and DUPCHECK will produce the largest per-finding dollar amounts. CODEVAL will produce the highest volume. Total prevented overpayment will exceed $400K on $21M in reviewed claims.
If the discrepancy rate is below 2%, the prevented-overpayment share model is weak and the PEPM must carry the economics alone. If above 6%, the thesis is stronger than projected and pricing can increase.
The first Billing Governance Certificate. The study results. A publishable summary suitable for benefits industry publications (Benefits Quarterly, ISCEBS, HFMA). This becomes Caliber's Cohort 1 — the evidence anchor that every subsequent conversation references.
What not to do: Don't position the TPA partnership or stop-loss integration in any employer-facing materials. The employer is the buyer today. Signaling TPA or carrier ambitions confuses the current sale. The partnership conversation happens when the data compels it.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| BGS | Billing Governance Standard. The published, versioned methodology for verification cycles. |
| Billing Governance Certificate | The quarterly deliverable. Documents verification results, discrepancy rates, prevented overpayments, and provider accuracy scores. |
| Verification Rate | % of reviewed claims confirmed accurate. Analogous to Cadence's DAR. |
| Discrepancy Rate | % of reviewed claims with identified inaccuracies. Analogous to Cadence's RIR. |
| Prevented Overpayment | Dollar amount of billing discrepancies caught before payment. Not modeled — measured. |
| Payment-Hold Window | The 14-60 day period during which TPAs hold high-cost claims before releasing payment. Caliber operates within this window. |
| Escalate | Claim determination requiring employer/TPA decision. Caliber documents findings; the employer decides payment action. Advisory-only. |
| Caliber Baseline Study | First-pilot evidence study. 300-400 claims, full BGS methodology. Produces Caliber's Cohort 1 evidence base. |
| Governance Portfolio | Unified document combining Cadence, Curated, and Caliber governance certificates for stop-loss and board presentation. |
| CODEVAL | Coding accuracy verification check. |
| DUPCHECK | Duplicate billing detection check. |
| RATEVAL | Contracted rate compliance verification. |
| DURVAL | Length-of-stay / duration verification. |
| CREDVAL | Provider credential level verification. |
| SVCVAL | Service delivery verification. |
| BUNDLEVAL | Bundle compliance verification. |