Evolent team members (from left): Jamal Blair, Michelle Talley, Sterling Neilson, Nicole Sud, Dave Thornton, Clare Hathaway, Anisha Singh and Amanda Zeitler. Portrait by Erick Gibson
Evolent Health
Five years ago, Evolent Health set out—with just six employees—to change the way health care is delivered. Now the Ballston-based company has a workforce of 1,300. Its goal: to change the health care equation for more than 10 million patients by working with insurance plans to give patients better care at a lower cost.
Much of the company’s work is powered by proprietary algorithms designed by some of the 500 employees at its Arlington headquarters. Say a patient turns up in an outpatient clinic. Evolent’s technology will notice that he has high blood pressure and hasn’t been to see his doctor in ages. Now Evolent can flag him as needing a follow-up with his doctor and maybe some diet advice from a nutritionist. Which turns out to be cheaper than waiting until he has a stroke.
“Our mission is to change the health of the nation by changing the way care is delivered,” says Dave Thornton, a former AOL vice president who now serves as Evolent’s chief talent officer.
That sense of mission, he says, makes his job easier in recruiting talent. So does Arlington’s profusion of educated workers, and the synergies formed by having other technology, health and consulting companies nearby.
Evolent was founded in 2011 when several Advisory Board Company executives, including Evolent CEO Frank Williams and president Seth Blackley, noticed that many health plans were trying to figure out how to make the transition to “value-based” care. Health care costs were growing faster than inflation, and many employers (including the federal government) were looking for ways to reduce that rapid growth rate.
The Affordable Care Act, aka “Obamacare,” pushed the trend toward reimbursing doctors and other providers based on the quality of their care instead of just the volume of tests ordered and patients seen.
Value-based care could become a huge market, Thornton contends, and his company offers a range of services to make that happen—from consulting with health plans about how to make the switch, to partnering with them once they do, in areas such as benefits design, financial oversight, actuarial support and case management.
One of the firm’s first clients was MedStar Health, which partnered with Evolent to launch a health plan for its own employees. Evolent now has 1.4 million people in the plans it works with, and revenues this year are predicted to be $220 million. The company has been growing at 30 percent or more each year.
As the market for its services heats up, the company says it isn’t likely to leave Ballston anytime soon. It’s a “terrific hub for talent,” Thornton says, given the critical mass that’s forming with other nearby technology and health companies, and the ease of travel that comes with proximity to major airports.
Being across the river from the single biggest payer of health care bills—the U.S. government—doesn’t hurt either. Medicare and Medicaid both figure into the company’s growth plans, Thornton says.