Cohere Health: Where Tech Guides the Mission, and Mission Drives the Culture 

Chief Digital and Technology Officer Gus Weber shares an inside look at Cohere Health’s product and a mission that “isn’t just a statement but a lived experience.”

Written by Taylor Rose
Published on Jan. 13, 2025
Photo: Cohere Health 
Photo: Cohere Health 
Brand Studio Logo

Imagine stepping up to the checkout line at a grocery store — but instead of scanning price tags, the checkout process is a game show where every item in your cart requires you to spin a Wheel-of-Fortune-price-tag-generator. Whatever price you land on, that’s what you pay for each orange, sleeve of bread or slab of salmon you want to buy. 

The kicker is — you can’t put anything back. 

Receiving healthcare in the United States can feel a little like this grocery store game show. 

Which is why Cohere Health was started in 2019 with a mission that can be summed up in two words: simplify healthcare. 

“We do this by using data, AI and technology to enable patients, physicians and health plans to efficiently collaborate,” said Chief Digital and Technology Officer Gus Weber. “When they can collaborate, that ensures patients receive the right care at the right time, in the right place and with the right value. We aim to improve the experience of all stakeholders, enhance the quality of care delivered, lower the total cost of care and increase transparency throughout the patient care journey.”

What does Cohere Health do? 

Cohere Health is a healthtech company that provides intelligent prior authorization. The company’s primary goal is to align physicians and payers on the patient’s entire care journey. 

While Cohere Health is simplifying healthcare, the inner workings of its tech are anything but simplistic, and Weber oversees them every day. 

“My responsibility is leading the company’s technology, data and AI and digital efforts to create products that customers love and that help transform the way in which healthcare is delivered,” said Weber. 

His role involves partnering with clinicians, operations and sales to make sure the technical team has everything they need to meet the needs of patients, payers and providers — which can be drastically different needs, especially when it comes to data and even more so when it comes to prior authorizations. 

 

A photo of Cohere health employees at their desks looking at a product presentation. 
Photo: Cohere Health

 

Prior authorization data — which is sent back and forth between healthcare providers and insurance payers — often encounters obstacles. There are a few reasons for this. Each insurance payer often has very different requirements for prior authorization forms, which means healthcare providers have to tailor each one. The slight variations in how the data is annotated and organized presents a technical challenge on the side of the insurance payer. It’s like playing telephone where each person speaks a different language and has to translate then reinterpret the message before passing it on. 

An American Medical Association survey found that 91 percent of physicians said patients who need medical care experience delays — and 75 percent of them will abandon treatment entirely — due to obstacles in the prior authorization process. The problem is so common that The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services ruled that starting in 2026, insurance payers must approve or deny urgent prior authorization requests within 72 hours. The prior authorization process can be slow and harmful for patients — helping them is the big “why” for Weber and his team, uniting them in a shared mission that is the backbone of their team culture. 

“At Cohere, building a strong team culture is essential to fulfilling our mission of simplifying healthcare and enhancing patient outcomes,” said Weber. 

The product and the culture at Cohere Health are intimately intertwined around the company’s mission. 

“Cohere Health’s mission to simplify healthcare and improve patient outcomes shapes the culture by emphasizing purpose-driven innovation,” Weber noted. “The long view focuses on creating a sustainable, patient-first approach where each team member sees their role as contributing to a better healthcare system.” 

Weber’s Recipe for a Mission-Driven Culture

“Building culture on a team requires aligning vision, mission and our daily practices to create a cohesive and purpose-driven environment,” said Weber. “I think about this in a few buckets.” 

  • Shared Purpose: Create a team culture where every member understands and feels personally connected to the mission. This means fostering a sense of belonging and impact on improving patient outcomes. 
  • Empowerment: Build a space where team members feel supported to innovate, take calculated risks and learn from failures. Culture thrives when individuals are empowered to bring their best selves to work. 
  • Transparency and Trust: Encourage open communication and collaboration. A culture of trust ensures that team members feel safe to voice ideas, provide feedback and work collaboratively toward solutions. 
  • Continuous Growth: Prioritize learning and development opportunities that help team members grow both personally and professionally.

In Weber’s opinion, the mission comes to life when different teams collaborate on behalf of different customers.

“Since the mission revolves around aligning patients, physicians and health plans, the team culture should mirror this by encouraging interdisciplinary collaboration and aligning diverse skill sets from clinicians, operations, and tech and data for shared goals — this approach is core to our operating model,” he added. 

 

“Since the mission revolves around aligning patients, physicians and health plans, the team culture should mirror this by encouraging interdisciplinary collaboration and aligning diverse skill sets.”

 

 

A photo of Cohere health employees standing and sitting in an open industrial office space. 
Photo: Cohere Health

 

Take a recent moment as an example: “We had a scenario where our clinical review staff identified a bottleneck in the turnaround time for prior authorizations for patient care, which was delaying critical treatments,” explained Weber. “A multidisciplinary team of product managers, engineers, clinicians, data scientists and operations came together to rethink this process, with a technology-first mindset.” 

While the bottleneck was being addressed, Weber noticed that the situation was a perfect demonstration of the team being motivated by the mission of the company. 

“The data scientists and engineers provided data insights, clinicians shared the impact of delays on patient outcomes and offered insights to a clinically sound approach and product managers proposed product improvements to the flow,” he noted.

Weber added that, in this particular example, the time it took to get an authorization fell by 40 percent. 

“Members across our multidisciplinary teams are the backbone of building, strengthening and celebrating our company’s mission and culture,” added Weber. “At a purpose-driven organization like Cohere Health, their active engagement ensures that the mission isn’t just a statement but a lived experience.”

Once implemented, the solution was celebrated during the team’s monthly and quarterly “retro ceremony.”

“This success story was showcased across the company, emphasizing how shared efforts aligned with the mission to simplify and improve healthcare delivery,” said Weber. “It reinforced a sense of purpose, motivation and the value of cross-functional collaboration.”
 

How Cohere Health’s Mission Informs Daily Decisions

Weber sees the mission of Cohere Health as a guideline for how he, and other tech leadership, direct the team on a daily basis. “By continually connecting the daily work to the broader mission and fostering a culture of shared purpose, trust and innovation, the team becomes equipped to drive both immediate and long-term transformative impact in healthcare — positively impacting patients, providers and payers,” he said. 

  • Prioritizing Patient Outcomes: Daily decisions are filtered through the lens of what will most benefit patients — whether it's improving workflow efficiency, addressing a gap in care delivery, or driving better data-driven insights.
  • Breaking Down Silos: The mission promotes collaboration, which translates to creating interdisciplinary touchpoints in daily operations, ensuring all diverse perspectives are considered in decision-making.
  • Balancing Speed and Precision: Healthcare requires both agility and accuracy. Team decisions should strike this balance, ensuring timely action without compromising clinical guidelines and care quality.
  • Innovative Problem Solving: The mission encourages questioning the status quo. Each day involves challenging existing processes to find better ways to address inefficiencies or enhance patient and provider experiences.

When asked how he builds team culture, Weber had four tactics to share: 

The first: Focus the team on connecting their performance with purpose-driven actions. 

“We are passionate about integrating science, technology and clinical expertise to guide providers and patients toward the most appropriate care,” said Weber. “This shared purpose motivates our team to excel in their roles, knowing that we are improving the healthcare of patients.”

The second and third involve striking a balance between challenging the status quo and embracing humility. 

“We encourage innovative thinking to challenge existing prior authorization processes and address inefficiencies in the healthcare system, fostering an environment where questioning existing processes leads to meaningful improvements,” explained Weber. “Recognizing that we don’t have all the answers, we promote a culture of continuous learning, testing and experimentation, adaptability and resilience in the face of uncertainty.”

Lastly, it comes down to cohesive collaboration for Weber. “Trust and respect are fundamental in our interactions with colleagues, patients and partners,” he added. “We prioritize teamwork and collective problem-solving to achieve our goals.” 

He concluded, “I believe these cultural pillars are vital to our work, as they enable us to effectively address the complexities of healthcare, drive innovation and maintain a unified focus on improving patient care. By fostering a culture of purpose, innovation, humility and collaboration, we ensure that our team is dedicated to making a meaningful impact in the healthcare industry.”

Responses have been edited for length and clarity. Images provided by Cohere Health.