New Ballad Health partnership could eventually bring 500 new jobs to the region

Published 2:43 pm Thursday, May 7, 2020

Ballad Health announced a partnership that could bring 500 new jobs to the region on Thursday.

The partnership is with Ensemble Health Partners, which is currently used in 36 states and in Europe. Ensemble is used by healthcare providers around the country for full revenue cycle services and improving patient experiences and financial outcomes.

The alliance will eventually bring up to 500 jobs to the area, with a new Appalachian Highlands service center, which will service hospitals and healthcare clients all over the country. In detailing this, Alan Levine, CEO of Ballad Health, and Judson Ivy, CEO of Ensemble, explained this service center has no physical location at this time. This service center will involve various jobs in the revenue cycle, including management to front line workers.

Ballad has been utilizing services of Ensemble since 2015. According to Levine, in 2015, had Wellmont Health System and Mountain States Health Alliance have chosen to join larger health systems, as many as 1,100 local jobs would have been at risk.

In pointing out why this area was chosen, at the press conference Thursday, Ivy said there were three points.

“When we think about why Ensemble was attracted to Ballad and Appalachian Highlands, it’s really three reasons,” he said. “There’s a great amount of dedicated talent here, the culture in the area has a tremendous work ethic, in addition to the access to education.”

In answering questions of why this is happening now, Levine described reasons for once they begin using Epic, which is being adopted as a common technology platform.

“Why now? Why is it important today? It’s important because as we bring Epic up in June, we need to make sure that we are investing today in the proper training and onboarding of our staff, so that our revenue cycles can function properly when we get the new system installed.”

Levine discussed being proud of the region, and showing other parts of the country that we are growing and able to compete.

The transition for employees is set to begin immediately, and Ballad employees who participate in the revenue cycle received notification of this Wednesday. These employees will be at the same locations with the same pay. Levine said the total compensation package will increase because of the benefit program Ensemble has.

“The new employees that Ensemble will be adding, those employees plus our existing employees, will be serving health systems all over the country,” said Levine.

In terms of what catch there may be to this partnership, Levine had this to say.

“Just to be clear, there is no financial relationship between me and Ensemble, or anybody on the management team and Ensemble, or Ballad and Ensemble,” he said. “There is a vendor relationship where Ensemble does work for Ballad.”

For more information on Ballad Health, you can go to www.balladhealth.org. To learn more about Ensemble, you can go to www.EnsembleHP.com