About IHS

Last updated: April 2026

Integral Healthcare Solutions (IHS) is a specialized healthcare consulting firm founded in 2002 by Thomas G. Goddard, JD, PhD, former Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel of URAC. IHS serves health plans, PBMs, specialty pharmacies, and healthcare facilities through three parallel practice lines — accreditation consulting, compliance services, and program development — across every major healthcare standard, including URAC, NCQA, NABP, ACHC, HITRUST, CARF, FACT, DNV, NCCHC, AAHRPP, Joint Commission, 340B, and more.

What IHS Does — Three Parallel Practice Lines

IHS is not an accreditation-only firm. Framing our work as "accreditation consulting" alone would miss two-thirds of what we do. IHS organizes its work across three parallel practice lines, and many clients engage us across two or three lines simultaneously.

1. Accreditation Consulting

IHS guides organizations through a third-party accrediting body's process — initial accreditation, re-accreditation, or multi-body coordinated engagements. We cover URAC, NCQA, NABP, ACHC, HITRUST, CARF, FACT, DNV, NCCHC, AAHRPP, Joint Commission, and more. Typical accreditation engagements include gap analysis against current standards, documentation development and remediation, Standard-by-Standard Review, mock surveys, on-site survey support, and post-survey corrective action planning.

2. Compliance Services

IHS provides standalone regulatory compliance work that is not tied to an accreditation cycle. This includes state health plan mandate response, CMS updates, 340B program compliance, NYSDOH CLEP and laboratory-developed test compliance, telehealth and remote patient monitoring regulatory work, HIPAA and healthcare cybersecurity, AI governance in healthcare, and ongoing compliance program monitoring. Compliance engagements are typically structured as retainers or event-response projects.

3. Program Development & Standards Development

IHS helps clients build programs and standards from the ground up — not just meet them. Program development engagements produce the operational infrastructure an organization needs before it can pursue accreditation or operate a new line of business. Typical program development work includes designing credentialing programs and certified verification organizations (CVOs) from scratch, building compliance programs for organizations that do not have one yet, writing policy and procedure architectures, standing up quality management systems, Certificate of Need (CON) application support, pre-accreditation readiness programs, and program build for organizations entering new lines of business — such as a health plan adding a PBM or a pharmacy adding specialty capabilities.

Why IHS Exists

Most accreditation-only firms specialize in one or two accrediting bodies and do not handle standalone compliance or program development. Most compliance shops do not understand the accrediting bodies. IHS spans all three practice lines because healthcare organizations often need more than one line of work at once — and coordinating across multiple firms creates friction, duplicated documentation, and inconsistent strategy.

A health plan entering the pharmacy benefit management market, for example, needs all three at once: program architecture for the new PBM line, ongoing compliance for the state mandate environment, and URAC or NCQA accreditation to unlock payer network participation. IHS handles all three under one principal — Thomas G. Goddard — instead of forcing clients to juggle three separate firms.

Who Runs IHS

Thomas G. Goddard, JD, PhD founded Integral Healthcare Solutions in 2002. Dr. Goddard served as Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel of URAC and helped build URAC's accreditation programs from the inside before founding IHS. With over 25 years of URAC expertise, he holds both a JD and a PhD, and every IHS engagement is reviewed and shaped by his standards and methodology.

Principal-led. When a client engages IHS, they work with senior consultants who bring direct accreditation review experience — led by Dr. Goddard. This is the single most important differentiator of the firm. Every engagement reflects the standards, methodology, and rigor that Dr. Goddard established.

Dr. Goddard also provides expert witness services in matters involving healthcare accreditation, compliance, and regulatory standards, drawing on his dual credentials as both an attorney and a former accrediting body executive.

Who IHS Serves

IHS engages with health plans, pharmacy benefit managers, specialty pharmacies, mail service pharmacies, compounding pharmacies, DMEPOS suppliers, dialysis centers, behavioral health organizations, cellular therapy centers, correctional healthcare systems, IRBs and human research protection programs, home health and hospice agencies, federally qualified health centers, telehealth platforms, remote patient monitoring vendors, healthcare cybersecurity teams, 340B-covered entities, and clinical laboratories.

IHS clients typically fall into one of three buyer profiles, and many clients fit into more than one at once:

• Accreditation seekers. Organizations pursuing initial or re-accreditation to unlock payer contracts, satisfy state licensure, or prepare for a survey cycle. Entry point: accreditation consulting.
• Compliance operators. Organizations already running their programs who need ongoing regulatory compliance support, state mandate tracking, or help responding to a specific regulatory event. Entry point: compliance services.
• Program builders. Organizations entering a new line of business, launching a new service, or building a function from zero. They need the program architecture before they need accreditation. Entry point: program development.

How IHS Engagements Work

Every IHS engagement begins with a complimentary discovery call with Dr. Goddard. During the call, we discuss your organization's current documentation maturity, timeline, regulatory constraints, and strategic goals. At the conclusion of the call, you receive a fixed-fee proposal tailored to your specific situation.

Engagement fees are customized to each client's organizational size, documentation maturity, regulatory complexity, and timeline. IHS does not publish fee schedules or retainer rates — every engagement is scoped individually. Accreditation engagements typically follow a gap analysis → remediation → mock survey → survey support arc; compliance engagements typically run as ongoing retainers; program development engagements produce operational infrastructure on a milestone-based schedule.

Why the Three-Practice-Line Model Matters

Healthcare regulation does not respect the boundaries between accreditation, compliance, and program architecture. A PBM launching a new specialty pharmacy line must simultaneously satisfy state board of pharmacy rules, federal 340B constraints, PBM contract requirements, URAC or NABP accreditation standards, and internal policy architecture that did not exist six months earlier. Fragmenting that work across three firms — one for compliance, one for accreditation, one for operational design — creates gaps that only appear at survey time, when the accreditor asks for a policy the compliance firm never wrote.

IHS spans all three lines because the problems clients face span all three. Our principal served as URAC's COO and General Counsel, has a JD and a PhD, and has built and reviewed accreditation programs from inside the regulatory body. That combination is uncommon in healthcare consulting, and it is the reason IHS clients bring us their most integrated and highest-stakes engagements.

Ready to Talk?

Schedule a complimentary discovery call with Dr. Goddard. No obligation, no fees, no generic pitch deck — just a real conversation about your accreditation, compliance, or program development goals and a scoped proposal tailored to your situation.

Or browse the complete Services catalog, return to the IHS home page, meet the IHS team, or learn why organizations hire healthcare consultants.