Months after acquiring Aetna as a client, HealthEdge is adding 40 employees to its growing health insurance software company.
The employee growth will bring the Burlington-based company to 260 employees by the end of 2015, and will help the organization pick up more insurers as the payers update their technology.
“The majority of the technology running the industry is more than 25 years old … While they were great in their day, they weren’t designed to deal with the type of care and type of choices prevalent today,” said Ray Desrochers, executive vice president of sales and marketing for HealthEdge.
Like Aetna (NYSE: AET), Desrochers said there will be a significant number of insurers over the next eight to 10 years that will be changing out their technology, opening up a broadened market for HealthEdge to provide software that handles enrollment, pricing, claims processing customer service and analytics for insurers.
While HealthEdge has been providing automated systems since 2005, the market is just starting to catch up. Claims that have to be manually processed are now costing insurers money, and evolution prompted by the Affordable Care Act and fee-for-value models of health care have made automated processes and analytics a necessity.
“It’s very clear that these insurers have to be ready to deal with change in real time to be successful. The way to do that is to adopt modern technology,” Desrochers said.
The company has 28 clients today but is expected to grow, and has several non-disclosure agreements in place with potential clients, Desrochers said. Approximately $30 million, secured in September, will be used should the company wish to expand, though there are no immediate plans to do so, Desrochers said.
The company also secured $1.7 million in February, but a spokeswoman said the transaction was confidential.
Date: March 9, 2015