R1 to acquire Humata for AI prior-auth automation
CHICAGO, UNITED STATES — R1 on August 18, 2026, agreed to acquire Humata Health, an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered prior authorization technology company, to add autonomous, touchless prior authorization capabilities to its Phare Operating System (Phare OS) revenue cycle platform.
The transaction is expected to close by the end of the third quarter of 2026. No financial terms were disclosed.
Humata adds touchless prior authorization to Phare OS
R1 operates Phare OS, an integrated revenue cycle management (RCM) pre-bill platform covering prior authorization, utilization review, documentation, and coding for health systems through AI-powered workflow automation.
Humata Health’s agentic AI interprets payer requirements, extracts clinical evidence from electronic health records (EHRs), constructs customized submission packets, and manages prior authorization requests end-to-end, delivering a 96% first-pass approval rate for clients.
“Today’s announcement marks an important step forward in our journey to automate the revenue cycle and make real-time authorizations a near-term reality. Humata significantly enhances our coverage of the authorization process, advancing our strategy to have the most intelligent and integrated pre-bill architecture in the industry,” said Joe Flanagan, chief executive officer at R1.
Humata team joins R1’s R37 agentic AI lab
The Humata Health team will join R1’s R37 innovation lab, where it will continue developing agentic AI capabilities for revenue cycle management, including real-time payer policy monitoring and automated clinical bundle generation.
The acquisition reduces administrative burden for health systems across three measured dimensions: a 45% drop in manual staff touches on prior authorization requests, an 83% reduction in rescheduled appointments, and a 30% decrease in claim write-offs.
Flanagan added, “Together, we will continue to shape the future of revenue cycle management and help deliver better outcomes for the patients, providers, and health systems we serve.”
Prior authorization has become a major administrative bottleneck in United States healthcare, where health systems spend billions annually managing approvals from commercial and government payers, making AI-native automation a high-priority target for business process outsourcing (BPO) and RCM vendors.
R1’s acquisition of Humata Health directly addresses the gap between AI capabilities and practical deployment in hospital revenue cycle operations, where prior authorization denial rates have risen alongside the shift to complex, diagnosis-specific coverage criteria.
The combination of Humata’s touchless automation with Phare OS’s pre-bill architecture positions R1 to offer health systems an end-to-end authorization workflow that removes manual approval steps from a process that has historically required both clinical and administrative staff.
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