The story behind Verity™

On March 13, 2022, my husband's heart stopped in our living room.

He was healthy. Active. There were no warning signs.

Our 14-year-old daughter found him, called 911, and began performing CPR using what she had learned in gym class. She kept him alive until the ambulance arrived.

The first hospital could not explain why it happened. A second hospital implanted a pacemaker and defibrillator to protect him from a condition no one could identify.

We refused to accept that his heart had simply stopped for no reason.

Weeks later, he experienced another cardiac event. We went to the Cleveland Clinic, where he underwent every test imaginable. Still, there was no answer.

It took a third event nearly a year later, captured on an EKG only because we happened to be near a hospital, to finally receive a diagnosis.

While we were searching for answers, I was pregnant with our youngest son.

At 27 weeks, I developed HELLP syndrome. My life was in danger, and so was his. Our local hospital could not safely deliver him or provide the level of care we both needed.

I was flown two hours away to the only hospital capable of saving us.

No one on that flight asked whether the hospital was in our insurance network. They asked whether we wanted to live.

The hospital was out of network. Not because we made the wrong choice. Because there was no other choice.

Our son spent three months in the NICU, followed by extended hospital stays in Denver, Phoenix, and Salt Lake City.

Then, on July 8, 2023, our other son fell from a bunk bed and suffered a massive brain bleed.

Another life flight. Another children's hospital. Another moment when the only thing that mattered was keeping our child alive.

In two years, our family endured cardiac arrests, premature birth, a brain bleed, five life flights, and hospital stays across the country.

We survived all of it.

Then the bills came.

Not a stack. A flood.

Hospitals. Surgeons. Air ambulances. Laboratories. Specialists I had never met billing for services I could not understand.

Nothing lined up.

The amount a hospital said we owed did not match what our insurance company said it had covered. Different hospitals treating the same person told entirely different stories about what the care cost. The out-of-network NICU that saved my life and my son's life was treated as though it had been a consumer choice.

I had one question:

What do we actually owe?

No one could answer it.

So I started digging.

I compared every bill with every explanation of benefits. I researched the codes. I spent hours on the phone with billing departments that contradicted one another and sometimes contradicted themselves.

I found charges for care we never received. Services billed more than once under different descriptions. Amounts that changed depending on who answered the phone.

I found errors that could have cost our family thousands of dollars.

I caught them because I refused to stop looking.

But somewhere in the second year, I realized the problem was much bigger than our family.

What happens to the family that experiences one medical emergency and simply pays whatever the first statement says?

The family that is exhausted. Terrified. Too overwhelmed to question a bill. Too grateful that someone they love survived to start a fight with a hospital or insurance company.

They are not failing to understand the system. The system is failing to give them an understandable answer.

Families should not need to become medical billing experts to protect themselves from medical billing errors.

So I built the company I had spent two years wishing existed.

Verity analyzes medical bills and insurance documents line by line. It identifies discrepancies, duplicate charges, coding issues, and costs that warrant further review. Then it turns those findings into clear evidence, clear explanations, and clear next steps.

It is designed to answer the question no one could answer for me:

What do I actually owe, and what should I challenge?

My daughter saved her father's life. Doctors across the country saved both of my sons, and they saved me. I will be grateful for the rest of my life.

But gratitude is not a blank check.

A family can be profoundly grateful for lifesaving care while still demanding accuracy, transparency, and accountability from the bills that follow.

Surviving a medical emergency is already enough. Families should not have to survive the billing system too.

That is why I built Verity™.

Evidence. Clarity. Action.

Autumn Lohman

Founder, Verity™