June 12, 2026

The Council for Affordable Quality Healthcare (CAQH), a credentialing database within the United States, has been the standardized, electronic service where healthcare providers submitted their professional, personal, and practice information into a centralized online database since 2000. Instead of filling out lengthy applications for every insurance company, providers entered their data one time and authorized specific health plans and networks to access it. It was a non-profit organization used by millions of clinicians.

As of January 6, 2026, CAQH’s name has changed to DataSpring. The mission of DataSpring has changed as well. For more than 25 years CAQH was fundamentally a nonprofit credentialing agency that provided health care credentialing for clinicians treating more than 75% of Americans with health insurance. DataSpring claims that becoming a for-profit company will not affect the way that the credentialing functions; it claims that this change will improve the speed at which claims are processed and result in fewer mistakes. (https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/caqh-rebrands-as-dataspring-to-power-the-next-era-of-healthcare-data-1036231591?op=1)

Another view of the way that DataSpring will change the way CAQH operates is offered by Mental Health Professionals Equity Alliance (MHPEA): “For years, mental health professionals have worked under conditions shaped not by clinical standards but by financial and corporate interests… But instead of being supported, independent providers found themselves navigating shrinking reimbursement, opaque insurance practices, and platform models that extracted value without delivering long-term sustainability.” (https://www.mhpea.org/about)

The likelihood that these common for-profit practices are occurring is not surprising, given the fact that DataSpring is run by United Healthcare along with eleven other shareholder companies representing Cigna, Aetna, Elevance Health, Humana, and a coalition of Blue Cross Blue Shield plans. The board chair is a UnitedHealth Group executive.

As you may also know, the companies that have been providing referrals and processing claims from services like Headway and Alma, are also funded by commercial insurers.

CAQH, now DataSpring, is not just a credentialing database; it is a mandatory infrastructure that affects:

✦ Every provider enrollment decision

✦ Every network participation determination

✦ Every directory listing that patients use to find you

✦ Every credentialing process

Many members are asking us, what risks do these changes to a for-profit credentialing system owned by most major insurance companies represent to LCSWs? Here are a few concerns:

Data Use: DataSpring is a for-profit company owned by insurers. LCSWs and other health care clinicians wonder whether the information we provide for credentialing could be used for more than just administrative processes.

Confidentiality: The fact that DataSpring is a for-profit company may undermine the confidentiality of all the sensitive financial, legal, and practice details clinicians must submit just to get credentialed and stay in network. Patient confidentiality may not be protected if this information is shared, repackaged and exposed to third parties for commercial profit.

Conflict of Interest: Since insurers own the entity, decisions are likely to serve the profit motives of insurers, not the confidentiality of patients. Policies may slowly start leaning toward what works best for health plans, not necessarily what makes life easier—or fairer—for providers, and policies may be rewritten to take power away from clinicians.

To be clear, the changes made explicit by DataSpring becoming a for-profit organization, being owned by commercial insurers, and having ties to referral sources, are problems that did not occur overnight. This federal administration is supportive of corporate profits over patient confidentiality and LCSWs having the right to make treatment decisions; it has hastened a process that has been happening for the past 20 to 25 years. Changing this destructive culture is a high priority for CSWA, working with other mental health and health care organizations. But this is not a sudden development or one that can be resolved easily.

Please let us know if you have any questions by emailing CSWA Director of Policy and Practice, Laura Groshong, LICSW,  at lwgroshong@clinicalsocialworkassociation.org.