MultiPlan announced that it has acquired analytics and AI company Benefits Science Technologies for $160 million. The transaction agreement also includes a long-term incentive and retention program which will make BST’s leadership team eligible for target payments of $66 million over three to five years.
BST is projected to generate revenue of an estimated $16 million in 2023 and is expected to bring MultiPlan $100 million of incremental annual revenues within the next several years, according to the companies. The acquisition will add to MultiPlan’s four decades of experience in healthcare cost management by using BST’s AI capabilities to unlock insights from MultiPlan’s expansive claims data that include in-network commercial, Medicare Advantage and other government programs, property and casualty and supplemental insurance markets.
“This is a tremendous milestone for MultiPlan. This transaction brings together two leading healthcare technology companies that share a vision of solving healthcare’s most pressing problems,” Dale White, CEO and president of MultiPlan, said in a press release.
“BST’s platform, products and intellectual capital, combined with MultiPlan’s customer reach and expansive claims data will deliver rich, actionable data rapidly and prescriptively to health plans and employers seeking to improve care, avoid cost and achieve greater return on investment. I am very excited about the significant growth opportunities our new Data & Decision Science service line will generate for MultiPlan.”
BST’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform brings analytics capabilities that connect with over 160 carriers and plan administrators. By using AI, the platform is able to optimize financial and clinical decision-making for around 75,000 employers looking to predict and mitigate future risk and manage health plan decisions.
The SaaS company was founded in 2012 by MIT-trained experts including Dimitris Bertsimas, Ph.D., who will continue with BST post-closing.
MuliPlan’s new data and decision science service line will be ameliorated by BST’s key products focusing on price transparency, risk scoring and health plan insights.
“We are excited to join with MultiPlan to drive deployment of data-driven solutions more broadly to the industry,” Stephen Sofoul, CEO and president of BST, said in a press release. “BST was founded on the belief that data science advancements will increasingly influence decisions made by employers and other risk bearers.
“Over the past decade, we’ve developed a product portfolio driven by advanced analytics including machine learning algorithms for predicting future risk and artificial intelligence software for managing health plan decisions. Combined now with MultiPlan, we are even better equipped to help our customers improve the quality of care at a lower overall cost.”
BST's price transparency capabilities are able to provide prescriptive analytics and applications to help customers benchmark network performance, optimize network design and improve competitiveness. The offering can query over 500 billion records to aggregate rate information that will now be informed by MultiPlan’s data on 1.3 million contracted providers.
MultiPlan will also benefit from BST’s BenInsights platform for employers that aggregates plan data, offers predictive risk modeling and prescriptive analytics and provides value-added services such as benefit plan design and optimization.
Other solutions include actuarial-based modeling, flagging of emerging risks, prescribing financial and clinical program enhancements and digital tools including claiming and underwriting.