BCBS To Lay Off 70% of IT Staff & Outsource to India

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Blue Cross & Blue Shield is planning to lay off 70 percent of its IT infrastructure staff and offshore the jobs to India…………

Exclusive: Blue Cross Blue Shield layoffs to affect Texas employees

Bill HethcockStaff WriterDallas Business Journal

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas employees will be affected by upcoming layoffs by the Richardson-based insurer’s parent company.

A spokesman for Blue Cross Blue Shield declined to release the number of information technology and server jobs to be eliminated in Richardson or statewide in connection with a restructuring by parent Health Care Service Corp., or HCSC, whose primary servers are in Texas and Illinois.

Employees of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas will be affected by layoffs by the… more

“The size of our workforce fluctuates based on the needs of our customers and business priorities,” the company said in a prepared statement in response to questions from the Dallas Business Journal. “For competitive reasons, we are not disclosing that figure.”

Blue Cross Blue Shield, the state’s largest health insurer, has regional offices in Houston, Austin and Lubbock in addition to its state headquarters in Richardson. The customer-owned company also has claims processing offices and customer service facilities in Richardson, Abilene, Marshall, San Angelo, Waco and Wichita Falls.

Online IT publication Computerworld reported Nov. 2 that more than 500 people will be affected by Chicago-based HCSC layoffs nationwide. The layoffs will happen from February to April, Computerworld wrote.

The layoffs are a necessary reaction to meet customers’ needs for access and affordability as the health care landscape continues to shift, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas statement says.

“There will be some Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas employees affected, as we adapt to meet the needs of today’s changing health care marketplace,” the statement says. “We constantly evaluate ourselves to make sure we have the right technologies, right capabilities and the right skills to serve our members. In some cases, that means making tough choices about how we shape our teams to meet evolving challenges.”

According to industry publication Modern Healthcare, Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Illinois is planning to lay off 70 percent of its IT infrastructure staff and offshore the jobs to India.

And according to the Chicago Tribune, the second year of the Affordable Care Act was not kind to HCSC. The parent company’s financial losses in its individual business, which includes ACA plans, worsened to $1.5 billion in 2015, compared to $767 million in losses in 2014, the first year of the health law’s state exchanges for buying coverage.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas did so poorly on policies it sold on the ACA exchanges that it has requested $596 million in Risk Corridors money, according to this article in Forbes. The Risk Corridors program is a type of cost-sharing reductions program built into the Affordable Care Act.

Bill covers economic development and transportation. Subscribe to our email newsletters.