In the early summer of 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic overwhelmed even the nation’s most robust public health programs, Tennessee became one of a handful of states that chose to outsource contact tracing to a private vendor.
In June 2020, Hendersonville-based Xtend Healthcare, a for-profit medical billing firm without prior experience in infectious disease, inked its first no-bid contract for $20 million to do contact tracing, which means helping locate and warn people with potential exposure to someone with the virus.
The contract has since been extended by the Tennessee Department of Health five times. The last extension, on Oct. 25, gave the company a maximum total compensation of $75 million over the life of the contract, which now ends Jan. 31.
As of Nov. 17, the company had been paid $55.3 million, or an average of $3.1 million each month so far, according to invoices and information provided by the health department.
The pandemic forced every state to quickly ramp up contact tracing, which – in combination with widespread testing – has served as an important tool to help stop the spread.