Your payors have a strategy. now you do too.
We help independent specialty practices, 5 to 25 providers, recover the revenue their payor contracts are quietly losing them. Payor contract strategy, revenue integrity, and operational consulting for owners and administrators who are done being outgunned.
The independence tax: what it actually costs you
Initial claim denial rates climbed to nearly 12% in 2024, and HFMA estimates 65% of denied claims are never reworked.
Physicians and their staff now spend an average of 13 hours per week on prior authorizations alone, and 40% of practices employ staff who do nothing else (AMA, 2024). Medicare's 2025 conversion factor cut another 2.83% out of your reimbursement. And most independent practices haven't formally renegotiated their commercial contracts in five or more years.
The asymmetry isn't accidental. It's the operating model.
Independent practices are outgunned by design: by AI-powered denial engines, stale contracts no one renegotiates, eroding reimbursements, and bargaining structures built to favor scale. We exist to close that gap.
When practices call us
Most engagements start with a specific trigger. If any of these sound familiar, it's time to talk.
→ You haven't formally renegotiated your commercial payor contracts in three or more years
→ Your denial rate has climbed above 10% in the last twelve months
→ Your longtime billing manager or practice administrator just left
→ You just survived an EHR migration and your A/R is still a mess
→ You're considering a sale and want to optimize valuation before talking to buyers
→ A payer audit demand letter just landed on your desk
→ You're growing fast and your operations can't keep up
→ The latest Medicare conversion factor cut just hit your P&L and you need to find that revenue elsewhere
Sound like you? Start with a free fit call.
One goal: protect your revenue and your independence.
Payor Contract Strategy
Your contracts are either working for you or against you.
We pull every active payor agreement, benchmark your rates against current market data, identify where you're underperforming, flag problematic contract language, and build the negotiation strategy to recover what you're owed. Most clients identify meaningful underpayment in the first review.
Revenue integrity
You're billing for it. Are you actually getting paid?
We audit your fee schedules, analyze denial patterns by payer and code, surface underpayments hiding in your remittances, and trace the leaks that don't show up on a surface-level dashboard. Most independent practices are losing 5–15% of their owed revenue in places they've never looked.
operational consulting
Revenue strategy fails if your operations can't deliver.
We help your team reduce administrative burden, redesign prior authorization and denial workflows, and build the operational discipline that keeps recovered revenue recovered — without burning out staff or adding overhead.
Meet the Founder
Jessica founded Good Stewart Consulting after a decade leading payor strategy and revenue operations for independent specialty practices and academic health systems across the country.
[Read Jessica's full background →]
“Most independent practices have never seen what their contracts are actually worth in today’s market. That’s not a billing problem. That’s a power problem — and it’s solvable.”
