Health care giant Kaiser Permanente will establish a $51 million customer service center in Gwinnett County, creating more than 800 new jobs over the next four years.
The facility will open this fall on Breckenridge Boulevard near Duluth. It’s the company’s latest expansion in metro Atlanta; it will open a new information technology center in Midtown this spring.
“Kaiser Permanente is clearly an economic driver in our state,” Gov. Nathan Deal said Thursday at a press conference announcing the new Gwinnett facility.
The non-profit health care provider already operates national “contact centers” in California, Colorado, Hawaii and Maryland. Employees there answer 15 million phone calls and a million e-mails a year about insurance coverage, billing and other issues.
The new Georgia facility will serve more than 10 million customers in eight states and the District of Columbia, including about 300,000 in Georgia.
Kaiser Permanente will buy and renovate a 185,000-square-foot office complex on 18 acres near I-85 at Pleasant Hill Road. Julie Miller-Phipps, president of the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of Georgia, said the company picked metro Atlanta because of its deep pool of people with call center experience – the seventh largest in the country, she said.
“It helps us fulfill our mission of providing not only great healthcare, but great jobs,” Miller-Phipps said at the press conference.
At least 600 of the new jobs will be located at the Gwinnett facility, with many of the others working from home, according to a company spokeswoman. The average salary of the employees will be $40,000 to $50,000, she said. Hiring is expected to begin this summer.
Gwinnett County Commission Chairman Charlotte Nash welcomed the announcement. “Who wouldn’t love to have an announcement of that number of jobs coming to their county?” she said.
The news comes as Kaiser-Permanente prepares to open the new Midtown facility, which will employ 900 people. With the new facilities, the company expects to employ more than 5,000 people in Georgia by 2020.
About the Author
