Eligible
Headquarters: San Francisco
Founders: Katelyn Gleason, Patrice Krakow
Launched: November 2011
In the past, few health insurers were set up to respond automatically, in real-time, to queries about a customer's coverage and eligibility for specific procedures. The Affordable Care Act requires them to build that electronic infrastructure -- a mandate that kicked in at the start of this year.
Eligible handles the complex wiring behind those communications. "We act as the exchange for information between the health plan and vendors," says CEO and cofounder Katelyn Gleason.
The potential market is massive: about two trillion queries for information each year. Eligible charges a per-transaction fee that starts at 5 cents and drops with volume.
Gleason, 27, and Patrice Krakow, 38, founded the company in late 2011 and further developed it at Silicon Valley tech incubator YCombinator last summer. It's now a part of the Rock Health incubator in San Francisco.
"Before the election, there was a wait-and-see mentality among health plans," Gleason says. "Since the election, we've gone from processing 1,000 requests a day to 8,000 a day in December."
They are also hiring. Eligible expects to add 10 to 20 engineers this year.
President Obama is proposing $400 billion in health savings, mainly by cutting payments to drug companies and providers.
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