Value-based care has a transparency problem. Payers have their number. Providers have their number. Nobody can agree on what truth is — and that disagreement is quietly costing providers money they should be reinvesting in their communities, their staff, and their patients.

Rachael Jones, CEO of Syntax Health, a Lightbeam Health Company, spent 25 years in healthcare — starting in a hospital in Paterson, New Jersey, moving through Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield, Anthem, and multiple software companies — before building Syntax specifically to solve the friction in value-based care contracting.

Her platform and services do three things: help organizations understand a contract before they sign it, negotiate with leverage and clarity, and track performance while they're in it so they're not flying blind. Now as part of Lightbeam, Syntax connects that actuarial intelligence layer to Lightbeam's AI-enabled risk analytics, care management, and population health tools.

Her metaphor for the Syntax Glow Up: helping clinicians and quality teams understand if the juice is worth the squeeze. Providers work hard. The question is whether the contract is structured to reward that work — or whether you can climb the hill and still not find the pot of gold.

Key Moments:

• [00:02:14] Three things Syntax does better: understand, negotiate, and perform inside a value-based care contract.
• [00:04:59] Origin story: from Jamaican immigrant to hospital administrator to "the dark side" at Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield.
• [00:08:12] The abscess tooth in healthcare: change management. "If we don't figure out what change management looks like, nothing you do is going to matter."
• [00:09:03] The 2026 Glow Up: payer-provider alignment on a shared source of truth for cost, quality, and risk.
• [00:22:04] Spicy hot take: "AI will not fix healthcare contracting. The math has to math."

Recorded live from the Vive 2026 event.

Catch the full conversation on YouTube → https://youtu.be/99lwANl1RbU

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About Rachael Jones:

Rachael Jones is an award-winning healthcare executive, thought leader in advancing Value-Based Care, and self-proclaimed “healthcare analytics nerd” adept in telling stories with data.

As a deep Value-Based Care expert, her distinguished career spans over 25 years in senior leadership roles for some of the largest health insurers and healthcare IT solutions providers in the U.S including Cotiviti, Anthem, HealthFirst, and the TriZetto Group.

A champion of transformational change, Rachael is passionate about improving the healthcare landscape, with a longstanding history of success in delivering innovative products, performance-enhancing analytics, growth-enabling operational and investment strategies, and cost-of-care controls.

A "glow up" signifies a positive transformation, reflecting the journey of becoming a better, more successful version of oneself.

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