When his company spent $135 million to buy Brentwood-based Change Healthcare in late 2014, Emdeon CEO Neil de Crescenzo said he hoped to advance innovation in Nashville through the deal.
That innovation now has one clear manifestation for de Crescenzo’s own company, as Emdeon will soon take the name Change Healthcare across all its business units.
The rebranding, which I first reported last week, is a validation of the significance of Change Healthcare, one of the forebears of Nashville’s startup boom.
It shows the impact a homegrown Nashville startup can have on a previously publicly traded giant with more than $1 billion in revenue, thousands of employees, more than eight billion health care transactions processed in 2014, and one which boasts that it serves 750,000 physicians, 105,000 dentists, 60,000 pharmacies, 5,000 hospitals, 600 vendors, 450 laboratories and 1,200 government and commercial payers.
Launched in 2007, health care price transparency startup Change predates the creation of the Nashville Entrepreneur Center and many of the other resources designed specifically to build the next generation of health care businesses in Nashville.
But it shares DNA with the companies that have launched since, including the aim to to capitalize on a combination of health care disruption and the legacy health care businesses in Nashville that provide necessary resources like investment dollars and customers.
Change’s sale to Emdeon last fall was heralded by many as validation of the potential for health-tech businesses built in Nashville.
For Emdeon, taking on the name Change Healthcare presents an opportunity to reflect “the full breadth and depth of our innovation and capabilities” in its name, de Crescenzo said in a release confirming the name change. A source familiar with Emdeon said the company has been working on a rebranding effort for some time.
This isn’t the first name change for Emdeon, which provides revenue cycle management and other IT services for health care clients. The company is a descendant of Silicon Valley-based Healtheon, a 1990s dot-com that merged with WebMD in 1999, and, following several transactions and a few rounds of restructuring, created Emdeon as we know it today in 2005. It’s since gone through other significant transitions in recent years, including a 2009 initial public offering follwed by a $3 billion buyout by Blackstone Capital Partners and de Crescenzo’s appointment as CEO in 2013.
Emdeon is one of the largest private companies in Nashville, employing more than 800 people locally and bringing in $1.4 billion in annual revenue, according to Nashville Business Journal research.
In January, financial publication TheStreet reported another IPO may be on the horizon for the company.
Date: October 10, 2015