“Our operations home base is here. It will always be here,” said Larry Smart, CareSource’s CFO, during a recent breakfast briefing with the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce.
CareSource is currently in eight states, servicing mostly Medicaid managed care and Marketplace members, as well as covering some members who are dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid, such as in Ohio and Georgia. Overall, its plans cover more than 2 million people.
“That means our centralized operations, call centers, claims payment...offices and so forth are in Dayton, so as we grow and we have to get more resources, we hire in Dayton as well as the new state,” Smart said.
CareSource is one of the largest employers downtown, with approximately 1,800 employees.
“So many other businesses have grown as a result of the growth of this business,” said David Bowman, chair of the chamber’s Breakfast Briefing Committee and president at Ohlmann Group.
CareSource, a nonprofit, boasts $11.1 billion in annual revenue and $32 million in grants distributed by the CareSource Foundation, according to Smart.
Of its revenue, approximately $8.9 billion came from Medicaid, according to company data. Approximately $1 billion came from complex, specialty populations, which are also covered by Medicaid. Approximately $1.2 billion came from health insurance Marketplace coverage.
“We’re not owned by any investors, so we’re able to take the additional dollars and put it back into the communities, back into our members and back to innovation, which helps us grow. We spent a lot of money on growth,” Smart said.
Other states with CareSource include Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, North Carolina and West Virginia. CareSource also covers Medicaid members with complex behavioral health, developmental or intellectual disabilities in Arkansas.
“We are centered around our members, our communities, where we are entrenched,” Smart said. “We are one of the largest pure Medicaid plans in the country.”
When CareSource enters a new state, it typically hires about 115 new people in that state, he said. The company ends up supporting about 170 resources through the economic impact of jobs in the area, and an estimated $34 million is added to the economy annually.
CareSource also brings some of its out-of-state employees to Dayton.
“This is our headquarters. So we travel in a lot. We have a lot of meetings. We have a lot of events. And we love to bring people into Dayton,” Smart said.
When they have all-staff meetings, they fill up the Schuster Center. They have employees flying in for those and other events, Smart said. This boosts Dayton tourism and travel services.
Credit: Staff
Credit: Staff
But getting to Dayton isn’t always easy.
“They’re going to restaurants. They’re staying in hotels. So the more we grow, the more people are going to start coming in here. And that’s one of the asks is that we’re going to need the transportation to get here,” Smart said.
CareSource is hoping for more direct flights to the Dayton International Airport.
“If we create more flights, the more people will come,” Smart said.
CareSource, over the last couple of years, has made bids to service Medicaid members in Mississippi, Kansas, and Texas. The Kansas and Texas bids through the CareSource HealthAlliance and CareSource Bayou Health, respectively, did not receive the sought after contract awards, according to those states.
CareSource received notice from the Mississippi Division of Medicaid that it was an intended contract awardee to serve Medicaid members in Mississippi, but the company has not started serving members yet following an ongoing protest from other companies that had sought contracts.
Earlier this year, CareSource announced a partnership to pursue servicing Marketplace members in Wisconsin.
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