Provider Fragmentation
The U.S. provider community is highly fragmented, with about 1.4 million doctors and clinicians across 86,000 organizations, plus another 200,000 solo practitioners. When administrative staff are included—ranging from 1.0 FTE per physician in large groups to 2.5 in smaller practices—the total community exceeds 4 million individuals.
Yet despite this scale, providers lack any unifying national, state, or local systems. Vendors continue to deliver solutions as if basic infrastructure—such as internet-based connectivity, interoperability standards like ANSI X12, HL7, and FHIR, or a defined healthcare ecosystem of providers, payers, and insurers—does not already exist. Each implementation is treated as if it must be rebuilt from scratch, preventing the establishment of trusted, shared data and undermining system integrity.
This fragmented approach makes it impossible to implement revenue cycle orchestration at scale—blocking access to best practices and keeping costs per transaction unnecessarily high.
Payer Consolidation
In contrast, the payer landscape is concentrated. A handful of national and regional insurers dominate the market, using layers of subsidiaries, plan variations, and shifting reimbursement policies to create controlled complexity. Their enterprise-grade systems are built to navigate this environment—leaving providers at a structural disadvantage.
Specific Problems Zarmik Seeks to Solve
As the saying goes, “no margin, no mission.” Providers face steadily declining reimbursement rates alongside rising operating costs. Without access to a better system, many cannot sustain care delivery.
Zarmik addresses this by enabling providers to optimize revenue operations and protect margins through:
- Thought leadership, industry education, and organization of the first national virtual provider community, built around the business of health care delivery
- Providing access to an open virtual health system for revenue operations, including free community resources (see Figure 2)
- Advanced analytics that measure and improve revenue performance through data-driven decisions
- AI-driven engines that give providers parity with payer enterprise systems
- Interoperability with partner and third-party solutions for unified operations
- Equal affordable capabilities for all providers, from solo practices to the largest IDNs
