Home care providers aggregate to enable complex care
NEW YORK: Home care providers are increasingly aggregating to create the financial muscle to enable complex care in the home.
Amedisys has signed a deal to acquire a Nashville-based health technology startup, which will allow the company to take care of more complex patients in their homes.
Financial terms of the deal with Contessa Health were not disclosed. The transaction is set to close later in the summer. Contessa will operate as a separate division of Amedisys, a Baton Rouge-based home health and hospice company.
The move allows Amedisys to expand into offering hospital-at-home and skilled nursing facility at-home services, said Paul Kusserow, chairman and chief executive officer. Usually these patients would be in a skilled care facility, such as a nursing home, rehab hospital or long-term acute care center.
“We have always worked to innovate and provide even more types of care in the home, as patients increasingly seek to ‘age in place’ in environments that are familiar and safe,” Kusserow said. “Bringing the Contessa team into our family significantly advances this strategy.”
Contessa was founded in 2015. It partners with health systems and provides the technology and infrastructure to run hospital at-home programs. Some of its partners include Mount Sinai Health System in New York, Ascension Saint Thomas in Nashville and CommonSpirit Health, the largest nonprofit health care system in the U.S. The company has raised nearly $60 million from investors, according to Crunchbase, a business information platform.
Travis Messina, chief executive officer and founder of Contessa, said the business was looking to partner with a national company to take advantage of existing growth opportunities.
“Amedisys brings a proven reputation for innovation, an industry-leading clinical workforce, and a culture and leadership team that highly align with Contessa’s,” Messina said. “We’re incredibly excited about what this will mean not only for our future and existing partnerships, but also for our caregivers, staff and patients across the country.”
The Contessa deal expands Amedisys’ potential market for in-home care services from $44 billion to $73 billion. It also allows the company to scale hospital at home and skilled nursing care facility at home services across a large area.
As part of the deal, Amedisys said it will “invest meaningfully” in Contessa’s business and its proprietary platform, CareConvergence. CareConvergence collects patient data and allows for clinical partners to coordinate customized care plans and arrange follow-up appointments, like they would be able to in a hospital.