Collective Health is the leading, independent TPA and Care Navigator, providing self-funded employers with a unified platform for health plan administration, cost management, member care, benefits navigation, and partner integration. Its offerings include Collective TPA, My Collective, Care Navigation, Collective Compass, The Partner Collective, and Collective AI, which supports member interactions, Member Advocates, implementation, and enrollment. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Kaushik Bhaumik, PhD, Chief Revenue Officer at Collective Health, to learn more about the company’s commercial strategy, its approach to healthcare cost transparency, and how it is helping employers manage increasingly complex health benefits.
Kaushik Bhaumik’s Background
When asked about his background, Bhaumik shared:
I’ve spent more than three decades building and scaling businesses at the intersection of healthcare and technology.
Most recently, I led the Americas Health Technology practice at Ernst & Young (EY) as a Senior Partner, advising leading payors and providers on performance improvement, data modernization, and platform strategy.
Before that, I co-founded Glide Health, an AI-driven revenue cycle management platform that was later acquired by McKesson.
I also spent over 16 years at Cognizant as part of the executive leadership team, helping scale the company from $1 billion to $50 billion in market capitalization and eventually leading its healthcare business into a multi-billion-dollar operation spanning payor administration, provider services, and next-generation SaaS solutions.
I began my career at McKinsey and Company after completing my PhD in electrical engineering from Cornell University.
Primary Responsibilities
When asked about his primary responsibilities at Collective Health, Bhaumik explained:
I lead Collective Health’s end-to-end commercial strategy, bringing together Sales, Marketing, Client Success, Revenue Operations, and Partnerships to drive strategic growth and expand our footprint across new markets.
At its core, the job is about helping more employers discover that they don’t have to choose between a better benefits experience and a financially sustainable one.
That’s a false choice, and part of my role is making that case to a broader set of organizations.
Core Products And Features
When asked about Collective Health’s core products and features, Bhaumik detailed:
Collective Health offers self-funded employers one unified foundation for plan administration, cost management, and member care.
- Collective TPA is our independent, transparent third-party administrator, built to reduce costs and administrative burden without the conflicts of interest you see in traditional models.
- My Collective is our member-facing benefits front door: high-tech and high-touch, bringing everything a member needs into one place.
- Care Navigation is a proactive clinical layer that guides members through their care journeys, including complex care, while helping employers de-risk their highest-cost claimants.
- Collective Compass gives benefits leaders and their consultants a command center with real-time visibility into plan performance and benefits administration.
- The Partner Collective is our 200+ partner ecosystem, designed to give employers genuine choice across clinical categories without sacrificing a connected member experience.
- And running across all of it is Collective AI (CAI), our platform-wide intelligence layer, including capabilities that power member interactions, support our Member Advocates in real time, and help benefits leaders streamline implementation and enrollment.
Addressing Rising Healthcare Costs
When asked about the challenges employers are facing and how Collective Health is responding, Bhaumik explained:
Cost trend is the number one issue I hear about, consistently, and across every type of employer.
It’s running higher than expected and shows no signs of abating.
But the deeper problem isn’t just the cost. It’s the opacity.
Most employers are operating inside what we call a black box: they get a bill, they get a number, and they’re expected to just accept it.
What’s driving the trend? Which members? Which services? Are there lower-cost alternatives?
In a traditional model, those questions are remarkably hard to get answered. Incentives simply aren’t aligned to surface that information.
That’s the environment Collective Health was built to disrupt.
We shine a light on the whole picture: which claimants are driving high spend, what services they’re using, where lower-cost alternatives exist, where claims errors and denials are occurring.
And critically, we don’t just surface the data. We help employers act on it.
Alongside cost, member experience is increasingly where conversations are going.
Employers are starting to ask not just “what did we spend?” but “what did our people actually go through?”
Those two questions together are what good plan design has to answer.
Competitive Differentiation
When asked what differentiates Collective Health from its competition, Bhaumik explained:
Three things, fundamentally.
First, independence: we’re not a carrier with a competing agenda. We serve the employer, full stop.
Second, transparency: 97% of our revenue comes from a flat per-employee-per-month fee. We don’t participate in rebates, we don’t profit from claim denials. Our incentives are structurally aligned with the people we serve.
Third, results: our three-year average medical cost trend is 3.7% and our three-year average medical plus pharmacy cost trend is 6.5% for our book of business in 2025, compared to the 7% to 10% projections typically seen across the industry.
There’s also something harder to quantify, which is the quality of care our members receive when things get complicated.
We have Member Advocates who bring careful attention and empathy to every member call, bringing in providers, navigating prior authorizations, and holding a member’s hand through some of the hardest moments of their life.
We have documented calls where one of our MAs spends over three hours on a single call with a member and their physician, helping to navigate claims issues.
That level of support is rare, and our members notice. Our Net Promoter Score (NPS) is 70, against an industry average of 30.
And then there’s a piece of our differentiation that I don’t think gets enough airtime in this industry: language and inclusive design.
A significant portion of the American workforce is Spanish-dominant, and the standard industry response is to check a translation box and move on.
We took a fundamentally different approach, conducting user research with Spanish-speaking members, applying an inclusive design philosophy, and building an experience that actually meets people where they are.
The results speak for themselves, with 76% of Spanish-speaking members reporting that they feel more confident navigating their health plan.
When your benefits solution truly speaks someone’s language, you don’t just improve access. You build trust.
And trust drives utilization, engagement, and ultimately better health outcomes.
Healthcare Industry Trends
When asked about the broader industry trends he is watching, Bhaumik said:
The policy environment is something every employer should be paying attention to right now.
There’s a lot of activity around what’s happening with Medicare and Medicaid, and while those changes affect government programs directly, they have a way of rippling into commercial plans over time.
Shifts in reimbursement rates, coverage rules, and provider behavior don’t stay contained to one part of the system.
In addition, the development of advanced therapeutics and pharmaceuticals to address serious diseases such as cancer and obesity are providing dramatic improvements in quality of life and care, but pose thorny questions around coverage due to the high costs often associated with them.
Employers who think of these issues as someone else’s problem may find themselves caught off guard.
Part of what I want to do in this role is help benefits leaders connect those macro signals to what it might mean for their own plans, translating the news into something actionable.
