CarePayment Adds Board Members and Chief Revenue Officer, Opens Nashville Office

PORTLAND, OR (October 21, 2015) – Patient financial engagement company CarePayment has appointed healthcare leaders George I. Lazenby, IV and Mark J. Emkjer to its board of directors, and named Ed Caldwell to the new position of chief revenue officer. The company also has opened a Nashville office where it will base its revenue-generating functions.

Lazenby and Emkjer bring extensive experience in growing successful healthcare businesses, including serving as CEOs of Emdeon and WebMD Health Services, respectively.  Caldwell, a former senior vice president of revenue cycle solutions for Emdeon, will manage and expand CarePayment’s sales and business development team, as well as pursue partner and channel opportunities to address the growing demand for CarePayment’s patient-friendly financing and financial engagement solutions.

Lazenby and Emkjer are joining CarePayment Chairman Craig Froude, CarePayment CEO Craig Hodges, and Aequitas Capital CEO Robert Jesenik on the board.

“George and Mark offer a wealth of strategic insight and hands-on operational expertise in CarePayment’s key market segments, including revenue cycle management services and technology and consumer healthcare services. Their entrepreneurial drive and commitment to improving healthcare makes them a great fit for our company as they help us maximize our market opportunities and business performance,” says Froude.

Lazenby co-founded and is CEO of OrderInsite, LLC, a leading provider of cloud-based supply chain and inventory management software for pharmacies. Previously, Lazenby was CEO and board director of Emdeon, the top provider of revenue and payment cycle management and clinical information exchange solutions. Under his leadership, Emdeon grew into the nation’s largest health information network, went public, and was later bought by Blackstone for $3 billion. Lazenby also served as COO of Medifax EDI, one of the nation’s leading revenue cycle management companies which was acquired in 2004 by WebMD. Lazenby has a Bachelor of Science in Accounting from the University of Alabama and is a certified public accountant. Lazenby also serves on the board of directors for NextGXDX, Compass, and ProxsysRX.

As CEO of WebMD Health Services, Mark Emkjer was instrumental in building the business into the leading provider of online wellness programs for large employers and health plans. Emkjer also served as CEO, president and as a board member of Accelrys, Inc., which designs computational science software for pharmaceutical and biotech companies. In addition, he held CEO positions at laboratory information systems provider Sunquest, patient care software developer Pace Health Management Systems, and Hospital Cost Consultants Inc., which makes contract management software for providers. Emkjer holds a Master of Business Administration in International Finance from the University of Miami and a Bachelor of Science in Finance from Florida Atlantic University. Emkjer also serves on the board of directors for Hooper Holmes and inContact.

Before joining CarePayment, Caldwell was senior vice president of sales and marketing for MediTract, a healthcare contract and document management solutions provider for one quarter of U.S. hospitals. He spent more than 20 years at Emdeon in senior sales management, business development and operations roles, including senior vice president of institutional provider solutions, where he was responsible for delivering revenue cycle management technology and service solutions to the provider market. Caldwell holds a Bachelor of Arts in Finance from the University of Alabama. The Nashville native is active in the Healthcare Financial Management Association and Nashville Healthcare Council.

“Ed brings a real passion for CarePayment’s mission and vision, and tremendous healthcare revenue cycle knowledge. He will play a vital role in helping us respond to the high level of interest we are seeing from providers seeking to improve patient collections, satisfaction, and engagement,” says Hodges. “As a Nashville native who’s spent his entire career there, Ed also will help us expand our presence through our new Nashville office in this important center of healthcare innovation.”

“CarePayment is the right solution at the right time for providers and patients,” says Caldwell. “With the patient now being the third largest payer in the U.S. healthcare system, hospitals, health systems, physicians, and other providers recognize the need to optimize patient collections in order to maintain financial well being. CarePayment’s patient-friendly financing programs and engagement platform are a proven approach for dramatically increasing patient collections and satisfaction.”