Healthcare experience. Analytical depth.
Signal Forward is a healthcare data, AI, and operations consultancy based in Nashville. We help organizations and their counsel assess complex questions and carry the work through to implementation.
Daniel Heacock
Founder and Principal
Daniel leads the firm’s analytics and data work, from assessment and financial modeling to model evaluation and implementation. His current work spans physician compensation, payment-model economics, clinical AI evaluation, data strategy, and support for healthcare investigations.
Before Signal Forward, Daniel led analytics at Optum and worked in HCA Healthcare’s Clinical Services Group. Earlier in his career, he worked at LECG in economic consulting on antitrust and DOJ matters.
Selected work with Daniel
- Physician compensation
- A configurable calculation system validated across six divisions and multiple accounting periods, with source reconciliation and a review interface.
- Clinical AI evaluation
- Recurring analysis of coding performance, error patterns, and financial value using audited cases and claims.
- Payment-model economics
- Claims-based applications for assessing hospital opportunity, care-pathway economics, and prospective partnerships.
Marianna Heacock
Operations and Performance Improvement
Marianna brings hospital operations, labor-productivity, and implementation experience to the firm. Her prior HCA work includes enterprise nursing operations across more than 180 hospitals and labor and productivity for a 17-hospital division.
Her background in industrial engineering and health systems informs work on staffing, throughput, process design, and performance improvement.
Working with Marianna
- Labor and productivity
- Examine staffing patterns, workload, and variation with the managers responsible for the operation.
- Throughput and capacity
- Map the steps and constraints affecting patient flow, and develop practical changes with clinical and operational leaders.
- Implementation
- Define responsibilities, measures, and a review cadence for putting agreed changes into practice.
How we work
Senior involvement
Daniel and Marianna lead their areas of work. Specialists join where the engagement requires additional expertise.
Methods you can examine
We document assumptions, source mappings, calculations, and validation. We explain where a conclusion depends on an estimate or a limitation in the data.
Practical implementation
We work with the people who will use the result, whether the deliverable is a decision, a roadmap, an analysis, or a working system.
Tell us what you need to decide, improve, or build.
We will discuss the question, the available data, and a practical first scope.