Connect once. Comply on shared rails. Expand when the network creates more value.

Connecting is free. Some services stay free permanently. Required interoperability runs on a common compliance utility — free for payers through 2027, and providers never pay SHN for prior authorization. The broader network is funded when participants elect EXPAND.

Roads don’t charge by destination. The Internet doesn’t charge per website. Electric utilities don’t negotiate a separate contract for every appliance. Healthcare’s administrative infrastructure should work the same way: published, objectively applicable rates keep the network neutral, predictable, and inexpensive enough that everyone connects once and reuses the same rails.

Four service classes. Independent choices.

The four rules.

Precisely: Patients never pay SHN. Providers never pay SHN for prior authorization. Network participation fees never stack within a covered payer book — only the highest applicable service-class fee applies: a payer book electing EXPAND pays the EXPAND rate, not EXPAND plus COMPLY. Optional Services are separate. Payer EXPAND billing begins at the Production Activation event defined in the network participation documents.

Payer COMPLY: $0 through December 31, 2027.

Federally required interoperability runs on a common compliance utility. A payer using COMPLY in 2027 may leave effective December 31, 2027 without having paid a COMPLY participation fee. From January 1, 2028, the payer compliance utility is $0.10 PMPM for payer books that remain in COMPLY.

COMPLY provides shared network capabilities and readiness evidence participants can use in meeting applicable requirements; participation in SHN does not by itself establish regulatory compliance.

EXPAND economics — the broader utility, not the cost of joining or complying.

These are the economics of the elective broader utility — claims and remittance, quality, reporting, and future governed services. They are not the price of connecting, and not the price of complying. Network participation fees never stack within a covered payer book — only the highest applicable service-class fee applies: a payer book electing EXPAND pays the EXPAND rate, not EXPAND plus COMPLY. Optional Services are separate.

How the meter works.

Commitment locks the rate. Qualification preserves Launch terms. Production Activation starts the meter. For payer EXPAND, billing begins at the Production Activation event for the covered book, as defined in the network participation documents. One enterprise agreement. State market schedules underneath it. Activation and billing occur by covered book. The covered book — not the state — is the billing unit; different books can be in different classes.

The formation window.

Everyone can comply for free in 2027. Organizations that commit during formation preserve Launch economics for the broader utility. December 31, 2026 is the formation window for preserving Launch EXPAND economics. Nothing closes after it: join later and pay published Standard rates, entering with your market’s next cohort. The network is open to every qualified participant, always — that’s what being a utility means.

What funding changes — and what it never changes.

Public funding changes who pays for implementation; it does not change what the network costs. Optional Services buy work — never network privilege. Hosting, integration, and managed operations never confer routing preference, better rights, or different network participation rates.

Why the prices are small against what they replace

The avoidable administrative waste the network attacks traces to a single defect: at the moment of a transaction, nobody is sure the information is right. Because no one is sure, everyone re-asks — by phone, fax, portal, and letter — and because the answers are still often wrong, everyone pays again downstream: denials, rework, write-offs, recoveries, bad debt. A transaction through the hub is right at the source, once. The savings are money the market already spends. Benchmarks: a manual eligibility check costs $6.78 against $0.34 electronic; a manual plan-side prior authorization $3.41 against $0.05 (CAQH Index). Whether the network clears your fee is computed from your numbers in a working session — and every participant sees its own computed fee alongside displaced cost on a monthly network statement.

How these numbers are built. Four rules. First, the fee must clear on bankable replacement alone — benchmark-sourced hard dollars for work that stops existing. Second, moved money is never counted as saved money. Third, every return is net of the cost to achieve it. Fourth, outcomes are measured, not asserted — Delaware’s launch measures the outcome layers in production.

How the rates stay honest

Rates are governed by an independent Council under a lowest-sustainable-fee mandate. Comparable participants under comparable conditions get the same rules. Surplus is reinvested, not extracted. Investor returns are capped, so no one profits from raising the fee.

One connection. Published participation architecture. Every transaction in the governed catalog — on a published calendar. See the catalog & roadmap →

Per-transaction benchmarks are published third-party figures (CAQH Index; AMA survey data). Results vary by organization, starting cost, route migration, participation levels, and decommissioning timing; whether the network clears your fee is computed from your numbers in a working session, and each participant sees its own computed fee alongside displaced cost on its monthly network statement.