Patient Care, a Milwaukee-based company hired by employers to assist employees in navigating health insurance plans, will return to its roots by opening an office in New Orleans.

The office will focus on earning business and servicing clients in the gulf coast with an initial staff of three.

CEO and president Jane Cooper founded the company in New Orleans in 2001, but after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 damaged the company’s office, she decided to relocate to Milwaukee because she liked the business environment and already had several Milwaukee-area clients.

The company announced earlier this month that it will open a sales office in the heart of the French Quarter while the company’s headquarters will remain in downtown Milwaukee.

“We are able to make a return to our New Orleans roots as a substantially larger company,” Cooper said in a press release.

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck the Patient Care’s New Orleans headquarters. In the days following Katrina, CEO and President Jane Cooper moved the company from New Orleans, where it was founded in August, 2001, to Milwaukee, where it has been headquartered since 2005.

Patient Care had 14 employees when it left New Orleans and now employs 70 in Milwaukee. The company’s revenue has increased by almost 2,000 percent in 10 years.

Several New Orleanians are investors and board members of the privately held company.

Clients include Harley Davidson Inc., Briggs & Stratton Corp., the Vitamin Shoppe and Virgin Galactic LLC.

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