Today, national health insurer, Humana, announced that it has acquired Certify Data Systems (CDS). This marks the third HIE vendor (UHG acquired Axolotl & Aetna acquired Medicity) that has been acquired by a payer in the last couple of years. Not that surprising when one looks at how aggressively payers are moving into the accountable care arena and seeking to form tighter links with physicians in their network, particularly those in the ambulatory sector, where CDS has done particularly well.

A key part of CDS’s success in the market was through its partnership with Cerner where it provided the technology stack for connecting ambulatory practices. The Certify HealthLogix is a well architected platform that has seen strong adoption. While terms of the deal were not disclosed, it is our guess that Humana paid a pretty penny for CDS, likely all cash deal at about 6-8x estimated 2012 sales.

While it is good to see that CDS leadership will stay in place, at least for now – serial entrepreneurs, such as CDS founder Marc Willard, typically do not last too long in large corporate entities such as Humana- we do have some concerns with Humana’s ability to actually manage a software company. This is way outside their core competency and hopefully they know well enough to provide CDS the resources to scale but also the wisdom to let CDS call most of the shots.

We will be providing Chilmark Advisory Service (CAS) clients with a more detailed breakdown of this deal later in the week after we have had a chance to speak with some key contacts/stakeholders of this acquisition. This will be pushed to subscribers via an Alert.