3 area companies propose 145 layoffs

Three New Haven-area companies have told the Connecticut Department on Labor they will be laying off employees this fall, with 145 people losing their jobs between the three business.

One of the layoff notifications involves AxisPoint Health and its decision to shut down the company’s Wallingford facility by Sept. 30. The move will put 45 AxisPoint Health workers out of a job.

AxisPoint Health notified the state Labor Department of its layoff plans through a filing made in accordance with the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act. The act requires companies proposing massive layoffs to give employees 60 days’ notice before closing a facility.

The closing announcement comes about 2½ months after the Floridabased private equity firm Comvest Partners and strategic investor Mosaic Health Solutions acquired the health care management division of medical products distribution company McKesson Corp.

After Comvest Partners and Mosaic Health Solutions acquired McKesson Care Management, they renamed the new acquisition AxisPoint Health. The renamed company specializes in case management services, nurse advisory services and a care management software program.

Officials with AxisPoint Health did not return calls seeking comment about the reason for closing the Wallingford facility.

Another layoff plan revealed Wednesday was Higher One, a New Haven-based financial services provider that focuses on college students. Higher One’s filing with the state Department of Labor said the company will cut 29 positions between the beginning of September and the middle of March 2016.

Higher One’s layoffs are the latest bit of bad news the company has had to endure over the past several years.

Mark Volchek, Higher One’s co-founder, president and chief executive officer, left the company in spring 2014. That was around the same time the U.S. Department of Education unveiled proposed rules to restrict Higher One’s marketing of its banking products.

Higher One has been the subject of increased scrutiny by consumer advocates and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

Company officials weren’t available Wednesday to comment on the layoff notice Higher One sent to the state Labor Department.

The layoffs announced by Higher One and Axis Point Health are in addition another filing made last month by Quest Diagnostics. The New Jerseybased medical testing services provider said it will eliminate 81 jobs at a Wallingford facility on Sterling Drive in the Barnes Industrial Park.

The layoffs will begin at the end of this month and continue through Sept. 21. Dennis Moynihan, a spokesman for Quest Diagnostics, said the job cuts are the result of a new, state-ofthe-art processing laboratory the company opened last October in Marlborough, Massachusetts. As as a result of the opening of the new facility in the Boston suburb, Quest Diagnostics’ centralized processing laboratory in Wallingford is closing, and the layoffs that are taking place over the next month are part of that process.