Growth strategy for companies competing in the health plan market.
Upward Growth is a health plan market advisory firm. We build go-to-market strategy around how health plans actually buy, operate, and make decisions.
We work with health tech vendors, investors, provider organizations, management consultancies, and health plan executives across Medicare Advantage, Medicaid MCO, commercial, and Blues plan markets. Engagements range from pre-revenue vendors closing their first plan contracts to established platforms scaling past $200M in ARR.
Engagements run as scoped sprints or ongoing retainers.
Health Tech Vendors
You have a product health plans need. We help you build positioning, a sales process, and a market-entry strategy to reach them.
Whether you’re pre-revenue or scaling an existing book, we work at the layer between your product and the plan’s buying cycle. That includes competitive positioning, pricing strategy, sales organization design, health plan buyer mapping, and market entry planning. The challenges we see most often: breaking into new plan segments, rebuilding a sales motion that isn’t converting, and preparing a growth strategy for a board or investor audience.
Investors
You need to understand how a company fits the payor landscape. We provide market diligence, competitive positioning analysis, and buyer-readiness assessments grounded in how health plans actually evaluate vendors.
Before close: we pressure-test the commercial story behind health tech investments in the payor market. That means evaluating pipeline quality, buyer concentration, competitive positioning, pricing sustainability, and whether the growth trajectory holds up under investment committee scrutiny. The goal is understanding whether a company’s payor market traction is real, repeatable, and defensible.
After close: we work with portfolio company leadership on the commercial adjustments that turn an investment thesis into measurable growth. That includes go-to-market execution, sales organization design, competitive messaging, and market expansion planning across Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, and commercial segments.
Provider Organizations
You’re building solutions that serve health plans. We help you understand how plans will evaluate your offering, what they prioritize, and how to frame your value in terms that match how they actually buy.
Provider-led solutions face a particular challenge in the payor market. The operational reality, financial incentives, and buying behavior of health plans differ sharply from how providers typically think about clinical and operational value. We help provider organizations close that gap: translating clinical capability into payor-ready positioning, understanding how plans evaluate provider partnerships, and building commercial strategy aligned to how plans actually buy.
Management Consultancies
You advise clients who operate in the payor market. We serve as an embedded subject matter resource on health plan operations, buying behavior, and regulatory context so your recommendations carry the depth your clients expect.
That includes health plan buyer dynamics, market sizing and segmentation, competitive landscape analysis, vendor positioning, and commercial due diligence. We embed directly into engagement teams, joining working sessions and client calls as a resource your team can lean on throughout the project.
Health Plans
You’re inside a plan and want outside perspective on where the market is moving. We work with competitive intelligence, strategy, and corporate development teams at health plans on the market dynamics shaping their business: how CMS regulatory shifts are reshaping competitive positioning, how carriers are repositioning in Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, and commercial, where the pressure points are in the vendor ecosystem, and what the strategic inflection points mean for plan decisions.
That includes competitive landscape analysis, strategic reads on carrier moves and market shifts, and perspective on where the industry is heading. Engagements range from one-time strategic briefings to ongoing advisory relationships.
Working with Upward Growth
If you’re navigating a growth challenge in the health plan market, we’d like to understand what you’re working on.