EASTON — Qlarant, a data analysis company that focuses on the health care industry, celebrated 50 years of business at its Easton office at 28464 Marlboro. Over a hundred employees were seated in a giant meeting room with glowing screens and blue and white balloons. They had not one but two giant cakes with their motto in the icing — “Best People, Best Solutions, Best Results.”
Maryland State Senator Johnny Mautz and Maryland Department of Commerce Secretary Kevin Anderson gave citations to Qlarant’s CEO Ron Forsyth Jr. and Board Chair John Murray. Anderson joked that his citation was bigger than Mautz’s.
“We are here to assist businesses and give them the resources and guidance to thrive. Commerce and Qlarant have this in common. We know you are walking the walk and not just talking the talk, because Qlarant is the three time winner of the Best Places to Work award. That is truly a great feat for our state,” said Anderson.
Fifty years of memories, photos and video testimonies were condensed down to barely 20 minutes in a time capsule movie. Some employees have been there for over 30 years and could remember having to type exhaustive data by hand. One employee said they put a computer on her desk and she didn’t know what to do with it. She figured it out fast, which seems to be a companywide trait. They started in 1973, before floppy disks existed. Now Qlarant has rows of servers. Data is their wheelhouse. Looking for patterns to detect fraud with proprietary algorithms is just one of their efforts.
Nancy Bettini was Qlarant’s first employee. She worked as an executive secretary. She was taught how to keep the books. Then she graduated into personnel.
“I was the mastermind who put this new building up. I worked 40 years. We support one another and work together as a great team. What we try to do is improve health care for all, like Medicare, Medicaid and long term care,” said Bettini.
There was a raffle for the employees to win prizes, including a giant Yeti cooler, a bike, a Blackstone grill and stainless steel fire pit. It was a celebratory and nostalgic event, but this company has billing for the next 50 years. Forsyth said banks are lined up to loan them money and that after COVID they are growing.
Pat Boos,d of marketing, said, “There are over 500 employees throughout the nation, and today we are going to have around 130 people in the room. It is the first time since COVID that we have all been together here at the Easton headquarters. Having a company that is 50 years old is something that we are really proud of. Our employment pool is quite diverse. We have data scientists; we have skilled statisticians; we have nurses. We have investigators and a lot of ex-FBI folks who work at Qlarant because we do fraud, waste and abuse investigations. Another part of our business focuses on health care quality reviews. And so we have a lot of coders and people who go into nursing homes and do their review checks. With such a large employment base, we bring a lot to the Eastern Shore.”
Boos also highlighted the company’s foundation, which gives away $500,000 a year to charities in Maryland and DC.
David Morrell, senior creative designer and creator of the time capsule, has been 30 years a historian of Qlarant .
“Right now I am fired up about how we are detecting. We are using the River program, which is a three-part analytics data program that looks and uses algorhithms to find and detect and then resolve issues. We combine human intelligence and subject expertise with advance analytics to attack waste, fraud and abuse,” said Morrell.
He said Qlarant looks at the functionality of Medicare and Medicaid.
Fifty years is a long time for an incessantly morphing company.
Forsyth told the assembled group, “We consistently change and adapt to meet the needs that are in front of us. Eighty percent to 90% of our current revenue is about to be locked in for the next five years. When you are looking at being a government contractor, that is a good spot to be in. In terms of best results, five years ago we were at about $78 million in revenue. We set a goal that by 2023 we would be at about $100 million. Our budget for next year is just shy of $100 million. When you are trying to remove a hornet’s nest you are going to get stung. We have been sued quite a bit, and sometimes the government will step in a say we are the ones behind all this effort here. But we have actually been sued for $100 billion that is with a ‘b.’ We won that lawsuit. It is a testament that we are poking the right people and getting the right results.”
He also is proud of the company’s foundation. It has given away $6.2 million to 99 different organizations over the years.
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