Peterson Philanthropies stands up health analytics company for employers

Self-insured employer groups are hoping to leverage their powers as prime purchasers of healthcare with a new public-benefit company funded by $50 million from Peterson Philanthropies.

The corporation, called Peterson Health Analytics, will analyze health claims of individual employers with an eye toward serving up detailed information with which providers will offer the best deal with regard to price and quality metrics. The corporation will also make data available for researchers. Cora Opsahl, MBA, former director of the 32BJ Health Benefit Fund, has been named managing director of Peterson Health Analytics.

The public benefit corporation is the result of a Purchaser Business Group on Health (PBGH) demonstration project funded by Peterson Philanthropies that involved five large employers, including Qualcomm, Boeing and the city and county of Denver. The project combined newly available price transparency data with employer claims and quality data. Results of the demonstration project, which were published by PBGH in October 2025, showed large variations in prices among facilities but also within the same facility depending on which health plan was paying. The demonstration project also found that the higher prices were not necessarily correlated with standard quality metrics for the medical services that were delivered.

PBGH will serve as Peterson Health Analytics’ “preferred advisory services partner,” according to a news release about the new entity. The National Alliance of Health Care Purchasing Coalitions is serving as Peterson’s leading recruitment partner.

“Employers have lacked a partner with no financial interest in keeping their costs high,” said Elizabeth Mitchell, PBGH president and CEO, in an email statement to Managed Healthcare Executive (MHE). “That’s the role PBGH Advisory Services plays. We help employers turn the analysis into decisions that lower costs, improve care, and meet their fiduciary obligations. We are responding to growing employer demand for transparent information they can trust.

Shawn Gremminger, president and CEO of the National Alliance and a member of the MHE’s editorial advisory board, said Peterson Health Analytics should give employers the kind of “rich, robust data” they need to become more active purchasers of healthcare coverage. He said data collected by Peterson and analyzed by researchers such as those that work for the Rand Corporation could also frame policy debates and decisions.

Gremminger acknowledged that one sticking point for Peterson Health Analytics may be the willingness of third-party administrators (TPAs) and insurers to turn over the participating companies’ health claims data. One of the findings of the PBGH demonstration projects was that TPAs and health insurance carriers “frequently challenged purchasers’ access to their own claims data, citing proprietary concerns or provider contract restrictions.”

“America’s highly inefficient healthcare system weakens our economy, our fiscal outlook and our personal health," Michael A. Peterson, chairman and CEO of Peterson Philanthropies, said in the news release. “By giving employers the critical they’ve never had, we can help bend the healthcare cost curve in ways that help not just companies and workers, but the broader U.S. economy.”

Although there is variation by how much, employers pay much higher prices to hospitals for the same service as Medicare. Indiana and other states are taking steps to cap the prices that hospitals can charge employer plans, based on a multiple of what Medicare pays. States are also taking steps that require more transparency and data sharing from the third-party administrators that employers hire to manage their healthcare benefits.

Gremminger said the kind of a granular data that Peterson Health Analytics is designed to produce can help make employers better shoppers for healthcare and help inform policy decisions but acknowledged the limitations.

“It doesn’t solve out-of-control prices by itself,” he said.