Nashville, Tennessee-based healthcare payment management company Emdeon has agreed to acquire Nashville-based price transparency company Change Healthcare for approximately $135 million cash upfront with an additional $50 million in potential earnouts. Change Healthcare has raised at least $34 million to date.

Emdeon offers revenue management tools to providers, claims management tools to payors, and prescription management tools to pharmacies. The company will use Change Healthcare's price transparency services in its payment management offering. The Change Healthcare team will join Emdeon and make up Emdeon's healthcare consumer engagement team, which will be led by Change Healthcare's CEO, Doug Ghertner. Ghertner was formerly CVS Health's senior vice president of client solutions.

"Our customers are prioritizing information, insights and capabilities that enable individuals to be better healthcare consumers,” Emdeon CEO Neil de Crescenzo said in a statement. “By combining our connectivity and scale with Change Healthcare’s transparency and personalization capabilities, we can help our customers further increase member and patient engagement and add even more value to the services they provide their customers.”

Emdeon processes more than seven billion transactions with a claims value of $1 trillion annually, according to the company.

On top of the price transparency tools, Change Healthcare also offers targeted reminders for patients who want to manage their health; a Healthcare University that teaches patients about benefits, healthcare billing, and health insurance marketplaces; and support for healthcare decisions that patients want to make. Change Healthcare serves around 10 million people through the company's health plan and employer contracts.

This year, a couple healthcare price transparency companies have announced exits.

At the beginning of the year, Castlight Health filed for an IPO. After its second quarter earnings call, Castlight also announced that it had inked deals with 26 new employers including Google, Sprint, The Kellogg Company, and Texas Instruments.

In October, physician rating platform Vitals acquired a price transparency service, called Compass Healthcare Advisers. The acquisition combined Vitals’ rating system with Compass Healthcare Advisers’ price transparency system so that consumers can consider both options when choosing a provider.