Computer History Museum

Houtz, Jim (James H.) oral history

Jim Houtz describes his personal and educational background and his career in sales with Burroughs and IBM as a young man leading up to his founding of CyCare Systems, Inc. (originally called Computer Consulting Service) in 1967. He describes the innovative methods he used to fund his start-up business and how he reached the decision to switch from a general purpose service bureau to specializing in medical group practices. This led to expertise in processing insurance claims which Houtz built into a large company with offices in 12 to 14 cities in the U.S. and Canada. He eventually formed a clearinghouse, which he called CyData, which processed not only insurance claims for CyCare but also for a number of their competitors and ultimately was processing approximately 33% of all medical insurance claims in the United States. He talks about the benefits of his membership in ADAPSO and in an ADAPSO-sponsored Presidents’ Roundtables. He describes the acquisitions CyCare did to build the company and then discusses his venture investing and other activities after selling the company to HBOC in 1996 Made at Jeffries & Co.

Item Details

Date
2010-05-18 (Made)
Type
Document
Catalogue number
102702338
Organization
Computer History Museum
People
James H. (Jim) Houtz (Interviewee)
Luanne Johnson (Editor)
Burt Grad (Interviewer)
Category
Transcript
Format
PDF
Credit line
Software Industry Special Interest Group
Extent
80 p.
Place of publication
North America/USA/NY/New York
Language
English
Acquisition number
X5653.2010
Subject
Burroughs, Association of Data Processing Service Organizations (ADAPSO), IBM 360 (Computer System)
Archive collection
CHM Oral History Collection
Archive hierarchy
CHM Oral History Collection