Brice Wallace
A healthcare payments platform company will open an office in Lehi, creating up to 70 new jobs over the next two years, with the expectation of more jobs after that.
Waystar made the announcement about the $1 million project after being approved for a $408,959 tax credit incentive over seven years by the Governor’s Office of Economic Development (GOED) board.
Waystar’s cloud-based plat-form is used by more than 450,000 healthcare providers and 750 health systems across the country. Its technology automates payments processes and manual tasks, offers price transparency for patients and enables providers to focus on improving care. It processes 2 billion transactions annually. The company’s headquarters are in Louisville, Kentucky.
A pair of providers of revenue cycle technology, Navicure and ZirMed, merged in November 2017 and in February 2018 announced that the combined company would operate under the Waystar name.
The same week that Waystar received the incentive approval from the GOED board, it announced it would acquire Kansas-based eSolutions, a revenue cycle and Medicare analytics company, in a $1.3 billion transaction.
“We’re delighted to be able to open a presence in Utah,” Matt Hawkins, CEO and board member at Waystar, told the GOED board. “We’ve modeled conservatively 70 jobs.”
However, the eSolutions acquisition likely will lead to growth of that number, he said.
“We believe that the combination just makes incredible strategic sense for healthcare and will continue to expand our people needs and likely our Utah footprint, as well as just our opportunity to do some wonderful things in healthcare at a time when it really needs it,” said Hawkins, whose education includes a bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University.
“Utah is a great place to do business and we think there’s going to be great access to talent there.”
The project is expected to generate nearly $45.2 million in wages over the next seven years and new state tax revenue of more than $2.7 million during that time. The new jobs are expected to pay an average of $104,000.
“That’s unique because as we looked at these jobs, they’re significantly higher-paid than a number of other jobs that we’ve look at in the past for similar roles,” said Tom Wadsworth, GOED associate managing director. “So we’re really excited about this opportunity to have this company expand in the state of Utah.
“This is a unique cross-section into a number of different clusters or strategic industries that we’re looking at in the state: software and IT, healthcare but also financial services. So it plays in a number of areas where the state has strengths, so we feel like this is a perfect fit for the workforce and for the industries that we have in the state of Utah.”
“When we talked to a lot of people about this, they said this was a very important, up-and-coming company,” said Mel Lavitt, chairman of the GOED board’s incentives committee. “It’s going to be a really important addition to our tech community.”
In a prepared statement, Gov. Gary Herbert said the project will “create meaningful jobs” in Utah. “We appreciate their dedication and hard work in helping to improve healthcare in a monumental way,” he said.
“Waystar will be a great addition to Utah’s tech scene,” Val Hale, GOED executive director, said in a prepared statement. “We’re excited for the high-paying jobs they’ll bring to the state. This expansion will help Waystar better serve its customers in the western area of the country, and we wish them the best as they continue to expand.”
Theresa Foxley, president and CEO of the Economic Development Corporation of Utah, said Waystar in some ways represents the convergence of healthtech and fintech. “There is an abundance of talent here,” Foxley said, “and we look forward to helping them grow in our market.”
