Availity

Who owns Availity?
Availity is owned by a consortium of health insurers including Elevance Health, HCSC, GuideWell (Florida Blue), and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota, plus minority investor Novo Holdings since 2021.

Is Availity publicly traded?
No. Availity is privately held by its insurer consortium and Novo Holdings.

When was Availity founded?
2001, in Jacksonville, Florida, as a joint venture between Florida Blue (GuideWell) and Humana.

What does Availity do?
It operates the largest real-time health information network in the US, connecting more than two million providers to health plans for claims, eligibility, authorizations, and data exchange.

Availity launched in Jacksonville in 2001 as a joint venture between a national health plan (Humana) and a regional Florida plan (Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida, now GuideWell/Florida Blue). The goal was to reduce administrative friction between payers and providers.

In 2006 Availity merged with The Health Information Network, a subsidiary of Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC), which operates Blue Cross Blue Shield plans in Illinois, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Montana. Elevance Health (then Anthem) invested in 2009, and a Minnesota Blues plan joined as well. Private equity firm Francisco Partners invested in the mid-2010s, then was replaced in 2021 by Novo Holdings, the investment arm of the Novo Nordisk Foundation, which took a minority stake.

Provider groups and industry analysts periodically criticize Availity's payer-owned structure, arguing it can prioritize insurer economics over provider workflow needs. The company maintains that its multi-payer network reduces administrative cost for both sides.