Company History

Humble Beginnings

Gaffey and Associates was founded in 1987 by Kurt Junge and Mike Gaffey, both former associates of Shared Medical Systems (SMS).  Working from the basement of Kurt’s home in Marin County, the colleagues customized medical billing systems for their growing list of hospital customers.  By 1988 the offices relocated to Oakland, California and for the subsequent four years Mike and Kurt serviced customers around the nation. These personal encounters provided the partners with a comprehension of the hospital business office function, and their keen awareness of customer need helped to establish the personalized service that became and remains the service hallmark of the company.

Growth and Innovation

By 1991 Mike and Kurt had relocated the company to Hayward, CA and began research and development of a new product that would enable electronic submission of claims.  In 1993 (Gaffey Electronic Media System) GEMS 1 was tested and bills were electronically downloaded to Medicare, Medicaid and Blue Cross, creating a paperless billing capacity that streamlined payment processes, expedited payment and enhanced revenue for the hospitals they served.  Following the success of GEMS1 the company continued development of new products and focused efforts on growing the client base and recruiting a top-notch staff.

Continuous Improvement

With the retirement of Kurt Junge the company became Gaffey + Associates and by 1997 was marketing to larger centralized business offices, where the patient financial services function for multiple hospital sites was conducted. The need was apparent for the evolution of GEMS to a multi-user application. Giving claim information to many more users, GEMS2, a Windows-based client server application.  Because it could also be installed to a hospital’s network platform, it enabled less complex installation and proved more efficient for the work of the business offices – a key driver of product enhancement for Gaffey + Associates.

Throughout 2001 all existing hospital customers were converted to the advanced system, GEMS2, and while continuing to add new clients Gaffey + Associates also continuously improved the program.  Among the numerous functions of GEMS2, the software system contains a built-in UB92 claim form for efficient editing and direct processing to all payers and also offers electronic remittance advice for Blue Cross and commercial payers as well as management level reporting capability on the Web.

In 2004 Gaffey + Associates moved its production servers to a state-of-the-art, secure data center in Northern California and its corporate office to a Class-A business complex in Pleasanton, California.  Today millions of claims, valued at billions of dollars in benefits, are processed annually by Gaffey + Associates - where meeting the customer’s need remains paramount.