CAQH announced it has appointed Melissa Frieswick as its first Chief Commercial Officer, creating a new executive role designed to accelerate the organization’s next phase of growth and deepen how it works with providers, health plans, and industry partners. The move signals a sharper commercial focus as healthcare stakeholders look to extract greater impact from the data, connectivity, and operational solutions that underpin day-to-day administrative and clinical workflows across the system.
Frieswick will lead CAQH’s commercial strategy and growth priorities, with a mandate to align offerings more closely with how healthcare organizations operate and what they need from shared data infrastructure. CAQH said her responsibilities will center on driving growth and expanding partnerships across its ecosystem, helping customers and partners generate more value from the data and services they rely on as CAQH scales.
The appointment also reinforces CAQH’s positioning as a foundational connector in healthcare information exchange. For more than 25 years, CAQH has worked with providers, health plans, and other stakeholders to improve how essential information is collected, maintained, and shared. The organization says it maintains one of the largest and most comprehensive healthcare data foundations in the United States, built from provider-sourced data and supplemented with member data from health plans. CAQH reported that it maintains more than 4.8 million provider data records sourced directly from providers and includes member data on 75 percent of U.S. covered lives supplied by health plans, a scale it intends to leverage for continued growth and broader industry impact.
Frieswick brings more than two decades of experience spanning payer operations and digital health, with a career focused on commercial growth, client strategy, and enterprise transformation. She spent 13 years at Cigna across underwriting, account management, sales, health advocacy, and enterprise strategy, and later led Health and Productivity Consulting for global employers. She then moved into senior roles at high-growth healthcare organizations, including serving on the Virgin Pulse senior leadership team during a period of accelerated growth and operating as Chief Revenue Officer at Maven during a high-growth phase.
CAQH leadership framed the hire as a strategic addition to translate market demand into scalable customer outcomes. As healthcare organizations face persistent pressure to modernize operations, improve data quality, and reduce administrative friction, CAQH is emphasizing commercial execution and partner alignment as critical levers for adoption and impact. Frieswick’s remit reflects that focus, tying go-to-market priorities to practical workflows for providers and payers and to the partnerships required to expand connectivity and utility across the industry.
Frieswick is also active in healthcare leadership communities, including the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association, the Fast Company Impact Council, and Women Business Leaders of the U.S. Health Care Industry Foundation. CAQH said her industry perspective and leadership experience will support continued progress as the organization enters its next chapter.
Founded to streamline and standardize essential information flows, CAQH has become an integral part of the infrastructure layer supporting administrative efficiency, credentialing, directory quality, and broader data-dependent processes that touch care delivery and reimbursement. With a newly established commercial function led by Frieswick, CAQH is signaling its intent to more deliberately scale its partnerships and offerings, helping stakeholders achieve more with the data foundation and services they already depend on.
KEY QUOTES
“Melissa knows how to lead through growth. She understands how healthcare organizations operate and can turn strategy into results. Her leadership strengthens CAQH’s role at the center of healthcare.”
Sarah Ahmad, CEO, CAQH
“CAQH sits at the intersection of scale, trust, and collaboration. I’m excited to work with partners across healthcare to strengthen how CAQH supports their goals and helps them achieve more with the data and services they depend on.”
Melissa Frieswick, Chief Commercial Officer, CAQH
