Policymakers, payers and providers came together to discuss the current state of value-based care, artificial intelligence (AI) and share strategies to change the trajectory of risk contracting.

SAN FRANCISCO, March 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Arbital Health, the leader in Actuarial AI-enabled infrastructure for healthcare, announced the successful completion of the 2026 Arbital Health Summit: the Future of Value-Based Care & Risk Contracting, its annual invite-only event dedicated to solving the toughest challenges in risk-based healthcare. The Summit continues to fundamentally shape value-based risk contracting by bringing together payer and provider executives to share what's driving performance in value-based care, with real-world results from the industry's highest-performing companies.

"The Arbital Summit is always a moment of truth for us: are we helping the industry solve its hardest risk-contracting problems? What we heard from over 150 payer and provider leaders this year was that value-based care is working, but organizations often struggle to demonstrate financial impact within short contract cycles. They question how to bring actuarial clarity to clinical interventions by making the economics tangible, and how to determine whether AI investments are truly reducing costs or adding complexity," said Brian M. Overstreet, President and CEO of Arbital Health. "That points to a clear need for a larger deployment of Actuarial AI infrastructure to support value-based risk contracting at scale. This will unlock the next phase of value-based care."

Mark Gwynne, Chief Value Officer, UNC Health, also reflected on the event: "This was a group of executives that operate and think at a really high level, globally. Folks who are thinking of strategy and folks who are in the weeds. Blending all those perspectives together is really interesting and different. There were several 'aha' moments around AI. Aneesh Chopra's question, 'Is AI inflationary, or deflationary?' was thought-provoking."

Operational and administrative complexity in risk-based contracting is not new, but several panelists noted a meaningful shift in how organizations are approaching solutions. AI's role, for example, in providing line-of-sight between patient outcomes and financial impact, enabled by Actuarial AI, is allowing teams to manage contract performance more proactively than ever before.

"We're in the midst of what I would call an evolutionary revolution. AI is going to really transform the way we practice medicine and manage data. It enables us to make better decisions to care for patients. But it's a process that has to evolve, and I think we're still at the early stages of that," explained panelist Andrew C. Von Eschenbach, President, Samaritan Health Initiatives and Former FDA Commissioner. "Once we acquire and aggregate all of this data and information, how do we properly analyze it so that we can confidently and comfortably react and act on it?"

"The Arbital Summit gave me an opportunity to look beyond the day-to-day, and think about what technology and tools will give ACOs (Accountable Care Organizations) an even better, more complete understanding of the longitudinal patient journey," shared panelist Emily Brower, President & CEO of National Association of ACOs. "ACOs use data to deliver value to individual patients. We have enough evidence to illustrate what pathway works for a patient. You gain confidence to build that pathway and know that if I do A, there's a pretty good chance I will get B."

As value-based care accelerates in 2026, the ability to make fast, informed decisions is becoming a competitive necessity. Organizations that are already operationalizing and scaling Actuarial AI platforms like Merlin AI, the first Actuarial AI assistant designed to bring generative intelligence into risk contracting, are demonstrating a measurable performance edge.

Financial and clinical leaders described using Merlin to surface cost drivers and actions that have bent the cost curve, producing results that have played out across hundreds of contract settlements and touched millions of covered lives.

The 2026 Arbital Summit made it clear that the organizations winning in value-based care are not waiting for perfect conditions. They are moving now, with better data, sharper AI-powered tools, and a clearer understanding of what drives performance. Arbital remains committed to building the Actuarial AI infrastructure that makes that possible and looks forward to continuing these conversations with the industry in the year ahead.

Sam Deshpande, Former CIO of Humana synthesized the event well, saying: "Value-based care holds the promise of meeting healthcare's greatest challenge: delivering high-quality care at an affordable cost. I am excited to see Arbital Health's AI platform, along with leading voices across the industry, help shape the future."

About Arbital Health:
Arbital Health provides the Actuarial AI-enabled infrastructure for providers and payers to successfully manage risk-based contracts. Combining the industry's leading value-based care actuaries with a robust AI-powered platform, Arbital Health centralized fragmented data, accelerates contract performance monitoring, and helps speed decision making. Merlin AI, the company's embedded actuarial AI assistant, is powered by actuarial logic to continuously measure contract performance, forecast financial impact, and deliver actionable insights to drive down spend and MLR, improving patient outcomes while there is still time to act. Arbital Health is led by a best-in-class team of healthcare actuaries, engineers, and industry veterans, and backed by leading investors: Valtruis, Transformation Capital, Shaper Capital and Healthy Ventures. For more information, visit ArbitalHealth.com.

Press Contact:
Kay Blazar
arbitalhealth@svmpr.com

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SOURCE Arbital Health