SCAN Group CEO Sachin Jain, MD

Remote Care

CVS Acquires Signify Health for $8B

The Signify Health acquisition saga has officially reached its conclusion, with CVS Health emerging as the winning bidder over other high profile suitors such as Amazon and UnitedHealth Group.

CVS closed the transaction at $30.50/share or roughly $8B, which should be music to the ears of Signify shareholders after the stock hit a low of $11 earlier this year.

Signify offers in-home health risk assessments and provider enablement services to help organizations transition to value-based care.

• The company has a network of 10k providers across all 50 states and acquired ACO management player Caravan Health earlier this year to further expand its reach with Medicare patients.

• CVS CEO Karen Lynch said that Signify “will play a critical role in advancing our health-care services strategy and gives us a platform to accelerate our growth in value-based care.”

Through the acquisition, CVS is adding to its rapidly expanding menu of healthcare offerings that already includes over 9k pharmacies, 1k MinuteClinics staffed with nurse practitioners, and the third largest payor in the nation, Aetna.

• Acquiring a home care company gives CVS a new avenue to serve their large customer base at a time when more consumers are heading online for the everyday items that used to bring them into stores.

• As a bonus, Signify opens the door for CVS to provide proactive care in patient homes while keeping them out of the hospital, which has the potential to dramatically cut down on expenditures for patients covered by Aetna.

The Takeaway

With the acquisition of Signify, CVS has cemented its move away from its pharmacy chain roots. The news arrives as CVS’ retail healthcare competitors are pushing aggressively into outpatient services, following close behind Amazon’s acquisition of One Medical and less than a week after Walgreens scooped up home care company CareCentrix.

CVS has made it clear that it plans to compete in healthcare by establishing itself as one of the nation’s largest primary care providers, and with such a large footprint of conveniently located stores, they have all the right building blocks to make it happen.

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The Wire

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