The biggest retailers were zealous in their pursuit of home-based health care initiatives. But there’s little evidence to suggest that pursuit has been successful, at least thus far.

This week, CVS Health (NYSE: CVS) announced that it was laying off 2,900 workers. Simultaneously, reports surfaced of Glenview Capital – a significant shareholder in the company – emerging as an activist investor.

Reuters then reported that CVS Health is exploring a potential breakup of its business. CVS Health has multiple segments, including retail, pharmacy, insurance through Aetna and health care services.

Health care services is where the company took a stab at home-based health care for the first time. In addition to acquiring the community- and senior-focused primary care provider Oak Street Health for over $10 billion last year, it also acquired the home-focused value-based care platform Signify Health for $8 billion.

“CVS’ management team and Board of Directors are continually exploring ways to create shareholder value,” a CVS spokesperson told Reuters. “We remain focused on driving performance and delivering high quality healthcare products and services enabled by our unmatched scale and integrated model.”

For payers, investors and retailers alike, home-based care looked like a worthwhile frontier to explore during the pandemic. For retailers like CVS Health and Walgreens Boots Alliance (Nasdaq: WBA) specifically, their success administering the COVID-19 vaccine to Americans gave them hope that community-based health care would be a somewhat smooth path forward.

That has not been the case, for Walgreens, CVS Health, or a slew of others.

In this week’s exclusive, members-only HHCN+ Update, I revisit the plight of retailers delving into home-based care, and consider who will be the beneficiaries of health care moving to the home.

Support in the home

The overarching idea is simple. The United States has an aging population, and more seniors than ever want to receive their health care in the home.

Plus, home-based health care tends to be cheaper than facility-based care. Traditional personal care services enable seniors to age in place and prevent further health problems related to activities of daily living struggles. Home health care ensures smooth transitions home from the hospital, keeping patients out of more costly brick-and-mortar settings.

Other home-based care is becoming popular too. Home-based care for younger Americans. Skilled nursing facility care in the home (SNF at Home). Hospital-at-home care. Primary care at home. Oncology care at home. Kidney care at home. In-home health assessments and evaluations.

Broadly, these types of care are more consumer-focused, a departure from the care that forced Americans to uproot their lives for a day, week or even months to receive the health care they needed.

For the sake of designation, I refer to Medicare-certified home health care and personal care services – through Medicaid, private pay or the VA – as “traditional” home-based care services.

As more non-traditional at-home care has proliferated, there was some sense of concern from traditional providers that more cash-strapped entities could disrupt two long standing industries.

That still could be the case, as home health and home care providers tend to be – on average – behind the curve on technology and future-facing business practices.

But in the last quarter of 2024, that disruption doesn’t seem any closer than it did in 2019.

Walmart (NYSE: WMT), which wanted to “support people aging in their homes,” has largely ditched its health care services plan. Amazon launched Amazon Care – which had an at-home care component – and then did away with it shortly thereafter. Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) is still mostly smooth sailing, but it intended from the start to be a technology partner more than anything.

Then there’s CVS Health and Walgreens, which both made massive bets – strategically and monetarily – on health care services.

Both began to shrink their retail footprints, hoping to become more health care providers than corner stores.

Walgreens invested over $6 billion in VillageMD, another home- and community-focused primary care provider. It also acquired CareCentrix, a post-acute technology company. An affiliate of the company was also a significant backer of BrightSpring Health Services (Nasdaq: BTSG), one of the largest home-based care providers in the country.

But then, earlier this year, CEO Tim Wentworth announced that the company would be undergoing a “strategic review of its assets.”

“We are now meaningfully looking at the entire portfolio of assets that we have to ensure that everything we have is going to drive the growth that we aspire to deliver,” he said at the time.

The company shuttered 160 VillageMD locations after aggressively expanding in years prior.

The investment firm KKR also acquired Walgreens’ remaining shares in BrightSpring.

Both CVS and Walgreens have had multiple leaders look over their health care divisions over a short period of time.

While CVS owns Oak Street Health and Signify Health – a similar portfolio to Walgreens’ backing of VillageMD and CareCentrix – it also purchased Aetna for $70 billion back in 2018.

Aetna’s leader was also recently ousted by CVS Health.

While Glenview Capital – the rumored activist investor – said it was not pushing for a breakup of the company, other news outlets reported that CVS’ board has already discussed that option.

Not long ago, CVS Health was considered a potential buyer for some of the remaining standalone home health companies. It had an obvious interest in home-based care, and also owned Aetna. Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM) and UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH), two of Aetna’s top competitors, own home health assets of their own.

“I think, over time, we’ll look at what other assets [we need],” CVS Health CEO Karen Lynch said in 2023. “As you think longer-term, around the corner, there might be additional opportunities in the home.”

Now that idea appears to be off the table.

Walgreens and CVS Health both wanted to become health care services players, and they are. Thus far, though, they’ve stumbled. They are not yet successful players, nor successful home-based care players.

What it all means

Legacy home-based care providers love the industries they’re in, and they know there’s plenty of future opportunity.

But they also know all the challenges that come along with reaching that opportunity: staffing woes; the delicate intimacy of providing care in the home; turbulent payment environments; and the barriers to growth and scale.

There are over 10,000 home health agencies in the U.S., while there are more than 30,000 home care agencies, according to best estimates.

Consolidation has been projected for more than a decade, but has never come in a significant way.

Payers like Humana and UnitedHealth Group own two of the largest home health companies in the country in CenterWell Home Health and LHC Group. But that still only grants them access to a small slice of the home health pie.

For instance, after UnitedHealth Group acquired LHC Group, it then agreed to purchase Amedisys Inc. (Nasdaq: AMED), another one of the top home health providers. But even with both agencies under its belt, the company will likely have less than 10% of market share in the industry.

There is more startup activity in home health care and home care than ever. A couple of those businesses may have a shot at disrupting.

But, for now, the large health care companies taking a shot at home-based care have failed to make waves.

That could be because of their size, or because of the complexities that come with delivering good home-based care.

Either way, for now, most of the opportunity that lies ahead still remains for the taking. And the legacy operators have as good of a chance as anyone to capitalize.

The post Health Care Giants Are Falling Short Of Home-Based Care Disruption appeared first on Home Health Care News.

CVS Health leaders reportedly met with Glenview Capital – the rumored activist investor – on Monday to discuss ways to “improve operations,” according to The Wall Street Journal.

Year over year, CVS stock is down close to 10%. Year to date, however, the retail giant’s stock is down over 20%.

The company also announced Monday that it would be laying off 2,900 workers, with most of those being corporate positions.

In the wake of COVID-19, CVS Health began to switch its business strategy, as did its peer, Walgreens Boots Alliance (Nasdaq: WBA).

Both companies decided to dive further into health care services, partly because of the success they had as vaccine administrators during the pandemic. CVS Health acquired the primary care provider Oak Street Health last year, as well as the home-focused value-based care platform Signify Health. In total, those acquisitions cost CVS $18 billion.

Those businesses help make up CVS Health’s health care services arm, which is dubbed CVS Healthspire.

On its most recent earnings call, CVS President and CEO Karen Lynch reaffirmed commitment to that segment moving forward.

“We are committed to delivering value every day to our clients and our members,” Lynch said. “In our health care delivery business, we are driving meaningful progress connecting patients to health services across all of our channels, primary and acute care, health services in the home, and clinical programs.”

CVS Health also owns Aetna, one of the largest insurers in the country. Aetna President Brian Kane was removed from his post last month, after less than a year on the job.

As of Monday, it wasn’t clear what Glenview Capital would be urging CVS Health to do moving forward. The company is a New York-based hedge fund.

The post With Potential Activist Investor Emerging, CVS Health To Lay Off Thousands Of Workers appeared first on Home Health Care News.

The settlement is being paid to resolve allegations that Oak Street violated the False Claims Act, specifically by paying kickbacks to third-party insurance agents. The DOJ alleged that Oak Street paid kickbacks to those agents in exchange for the recruitment of seniors to its primary care clinics.

The violations occurred from September 2020 to December 2022, through Oak Street’s “Client Awareness Program,” which involved those insurance agents, who then urged seniors eligible for Medicare Advantage (MA) to consider Oak Street services. 

“Agents then referred interested seniors to an Oak Street Health employee via a three-way phone call, otherwise known as a ‘warm transfer,’ and/or an electronic submission,” the DOJ said. “In exchange, Oak Street Health paid agents typically $200 per beneficiary referred or recommended. These payments incentivized agents to base their referrals and recommendations on the financial motivations of Oak Street Health rather than the best interests of seniors.”

The settlement acknowledges that Oak Street knowingly provided kickbacks to these insurance agents during the above time period.

As part of the overall settlement, the whistleblower will receive $9.9 million.

“Health care providers that attempt to profit from kickbacks will be held accountable,” Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, said in a statement. “We are committed to rooting out illegal practices committed by Medicare Advantage providers, insurance agents and brokers that undermine the interests of federal health care programs and the patients they serve.”

Oak Street Health is a senior-focused primary care provider. CVS Health purchased the company for more than $10 billion in 2023. Like its peer Walgreens Boots Alliance (Nasdaq: WBA), CVS has built out a significant health care services arm as part of a company evolution. In addition to Oak Street – which does provide some care in the home – CVS Health has the home-focused, value-based care platform Signify Health under its belt. It also owns Aetna.

CVS acquired Signify Health for $8 billion, around the same time it acquired Oak Street.

Oak Street’s violations came before it was officially a part of CVS.

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Health care is hard – an idea reinforced this week when Walmart (NYSE: WMT) announced the abandonment of its previously grand health care ambitions.

There may be a day when the country’s largest retailers, including Walmart, become major players in home-based care delivery, but today is not that day. And other recent developments suggest tomorrow won’t be either.

Over the past half decade, retailers such as Walgreens Boots Alliance (Nasdaq: WBA), CVS Health (NYSE: CVS), Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN), Walmart and Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) have jumped head first into home-focused health care.

Each company teased an entrance into some sort of home-based health care, then moved quickly. One initiative after another was announced.

But Walmart and Amazon – two of the most capable and large companies in the U.S. – have already retreated.

Walmart first partnered with the home health provider Amedisys Inc. (Nasdaq: AMED) in 2019, the same year in which it launched its Walmart Health centers, with the plan to help customers access care in the home and play a more meaningful role in older Americans’ health care journeys.

“We want to support people being in their home and aging in place,” Walmart Health Senior Vice President Marcus Osborne said in 2021. “We also want to address social isolation and … how technology is playing a role there.”

On Tuesday, Walmart announced that it would be shutting down its 51 health care centers, along with virtual care services.

“Back in 2019, we launched Walmart Health centers,” Walmart wrote in a company statement. “During our five-year journey, we made meaningful impacts with patients while continuing to learn, pivot and evolve. While our mission to help people save money and live better remains, today we are sharing the difficult decision to close Walmart Health and Walmart Health Virtual Care.”

Amazon, meanwhile, conceded in 2022. It touted “Amazon Care” as a disruptive health care platform that would enable home and virtual care services for patients, but quickly pivoted. Shortly after, it decided to purchase the primary care platform One Medical.

In light of Walmart’s exit, it’s worth taking stock of the retailer arms race toward home-based care.

In this week’s exclusive, members-only HHCN+ Update, I dive into:

– A brief update on the history of retailers diving into health care services

– Which retailer(s) are most likely to succeed in the long term

– And what this all means for traditional home-based care providers

From disruption, to table stakes, to closures

In December 2021, I wrote that retailers were embarking on a mission to disrupt home-based care. In short order, each of the retailers’ plans became crystal clear. By the following September, I wrote that home-based care had become table stakes for those retailers.

At that point, home-based care leaders began to consider what business would be like after these retailers’ entry.

Broadly, I would put their thought processes into three separate camps: the first was genuine concern over these companies disrupting the traditional home health and home care models; the second was a lack of concern, more intrigue, and some consideration over partnership opportunities; the third was more of a dismissal of this trend, and an assurance that health care was local and intimate, and would remain that way.

It’s still early on in the game, but right now, I’d say the latter camps are closer to correct.

Best Buy has gone slower and steadier with its entry, aiming to augment home-based care – and mostly hospital-at-home care – through its capabilities. It has landed some impressive partnerships with health systems such as Mass General Brigham, Geisinger, Atrium Health and others.

Through the home-based care technology company Current Health – which Best Buy acquired in 2021 – and its existing capabilities (such as the Geek Squad), Best Buy has made an effort to usher more care into the home. But it hasn’t necessarily aimed to be a disruptor of the space moving forward.

CVS Health and Walgreens, on the other hand, have really shifted their company-wide strategies to lean into health care provider capabilities. CVS Health has CVS Healthspire and Walgreens has its U.S. Healthcare segment, both of which include primary care and home-based care capabilities.

Through CVS Health’s acquisitions of Oak Street Health and Signify Health, and Walgreens’ backing of VillageMD and acquisition of CareCentrix, both companies completed the three-piece puzzle that companies across the country are trying to achieve.

That puzzle: pharmacy, primary care and home-based care.

Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM) and UnitedHealth Group’s (NYSE: UNH) Optum have taken similar paths.

CVS Health and Walgreens came off the high of being able to administer hundreds of millions of Americans vaccines in 2021 and 2022. When vaccinations waned, a revenue void was left to fill. At the same time, a simultaneous epiphany surfaced.

Both companies realized Americans trusted them with their health care, and that as retail stores became less profitable, health care services would be a logical road to travel down.

While Best Buy took a slow ramp – and Amazon and Walmart backed in, and then out – CVS Health and Walgreens have most of their proverbial eggs in one basket.

The CVS Healthspire and U.S. Healthcare segments have gotten off to slow starts, but after spending $18 billion-plus and close to $7 billion, respectively, on these initiatives, CVS Health and Walgreens have no choice but to stay the course.

The dirty work

Home-based care, especially, is a hard game to play. Yes, there is an overwhelming demand for that type of care, a demand which will only grow in the future.

But there’s an equal demand for staff, a bevy of logistics to work through, and adoption and trust to gain.

Neither CVS Health nor Walgreens has acquired a straight home care or home health asset just yet, but many thought that would be a logical next step. For now, building out a successful health care provider operation has been a tall enough task for each, however.

Since Walgreens committed to its transformation, it has already hit significant snags. Walgreens’ former CEO, Roz Brewer, was replaced with Tim Wentworth, a more seasoned health care vet.

In March, the company announced it was conducting a strategic review of its assets. John Driscoll – the former CEO of the health-at-home technology platform CareCentrix – was replaced as head of the U.S. Healthcare segment.

“We are now meaningfully looking at the entire portfolio of assets that we have to ensure that everything we have is going to drive the growth that we aspire to deliver,” Wentworth said in March. “This doesn’t just happen overnight. By and large, the broader set of questions that we’ve got to answer will probably take a couple of years to really begin to show fruit.”

CVS Health is in the same boat now, slashing its profit outlook amid its own shift this week. CVS Healthspire generated revenue of approximately $40 billion in the first quarter, a decrease of nearly 10% year over year.

As Wentworth said, these things don’t happen overnight. And, like Walgreens, CVS Health is not backing away. At this point, it can’t.

“Between Signify and some of the capabilities we have at Oak Street, there’s a lot of boots on the ground in market capabilities that we have to really change the health trajectory of patients, whether that be readmissions to the hospital or managing your most complex chronic patients,” CVS Health CFO Tom Cowhey said Wednesday on the company’s first-quarter earnings call. “We have the resources, we have the program, we have the know-how, … and so I think both Signify and Oak Street will bring a lot to the table over the coming years on how we can really bend that cost around.”

Year over year, Walgreens stock is down close to 50%. CVS Health’s stock is down about 25% after a sharp fall post-earnings.

What’s next

In its statement this week, Walmart was candid about its decision to close all 51 health centers across five states.

“Through our experience managing Walmart Health centers and Walmart Health Virtual Care, we determined there is not a sustainable business model for us to continue,” the company noted.

If Walmart and Amazon are losers by forfeit, it’s still tough to name a winner.

As mentioned above, even if CVS Health and Walgreens regret the shift to health care services, it’s too late now to turn back.

It’s possible a hail-mary acquisition could be in the future, but for now, it’s likely these companies are just trying to get to the other side of turbulence.

One key difference between Walgreens, Walmart, Amazon and CVS Health remains, however. The latter owns Aetna, one of the largest health care payers in the country. Effectively, one side of the house controls the lifeblood of any health care business: payment/reimbursement.

In the interim, CVS Health can tout all the benefit Signify Health’s in-home visits are doing for Aetna members, and all the primary care referrals it has handed off to Oak Street Health.

CVS Health’s ultimate goal is to reach peak synergy between its pharmacy, Signify Health, Oak Street Health and Aetna. That will take time, too, but positive signs are likely to show up sooner.

There could be a place for home care providers to step in, too. The legacy, local providers have capabilities that CVS Health and Walgreens do not yet have.

“We don’t [yet work with those providers],” Signify Health President Paymon Farazi told HHCN last month. “But that’s something that is possible through the care coordination pathways product. There’s nothing limiting us from doing that, other than conversations with our health plan partners and those entities to make sure that that’s turned on. I have had partnership conversations with different home health providers. And we’re starting to explore more of that in the rest of 2024.”

Instead of CVS Health and Walgreens disrupting home care, it could be possible that they’re the biggest, newest partners in a growing industry.

All things considered, that’s the best-case scenario for legacy home-based care providers.

The post Walmart Abandons Health Care Plans, As Retailers Struggle With Their Home-Based Care Strategies appeared first on Home Health Care News.

The Dallas-based Signify is a health care platform that combines technology, analytics and networks to create value-based payment programs, which are highly sought after in today’s health care landscape. The company is CVS Health’s connection to the home, reaching members through millions of in-home visits per year.

Paymon Farazi, the president of Signify Health, recently joined Home Health Care News’ Disrupt podcast to talk about Signify’s direction over a year after the CVS deal was closed, how the company could work with traditional home-based care providers in the future and where Farazi sees Signify – and health care – headed in the near- and long-term future.

Below is that conversation, edited for length and clarity.

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HHCN: Okay Paymon, I’d love to start with an overview of Signify Health for our listeners and readers.

Farazi: Signify Health has a mission that’s pretty common in health care: build trusted relationships that make people healthier. And we have a unique way of doing that.

We basically do in-home health evaluations; we’re going into over 3 million homes in 2024. And the purpose of those visits is to really meet members where they are, do a full, end-to-end assessment of their current health situation, and help them think about what the next steps on their health journey should be.

That’s the core of the product offering; it is free to members. We call and schedule appointments with members across Affordable Care Act plans, Medicaid plans and Medicare Advantage plans across the United States. It’s free to them, completely funded by the health plans, who are our clients.

One of the unique aspects of our company is we have many customers: the members, our customers; the health plans, our customers; the clinicians in the field, I think of them as our customers. I could go on and on. But we have to make all those constituents happy and pleased with that product, which is again at the core an assessment of that person’s health and giving them a path forward for how to take care of themselves better.

What has changed since CVS Health acquired Signify Health?

It’s been great.

The CVS health leadership team deserves a ton of credit for a lot, but two things in particular really stand out to me.

One was they started out by asking us, what other investment can we give you to help you achieve your long-term goals? So they poured a lot of money, a lot of investment into the logistics platform that helps run our whole business, basically putting people into homes across America.

And they put a lot of money into the clinical network.

How do we grow and maintain the very best clinical network in America? That is our aspiration.

And then the second thing was around how they could help us do things like partnerships across pharmacy and retail to bring greater value to our health plan clients.

They were really determined and insistent on us being multipayer business going forward, which we were in the first place. They wanted us to continue to enhance those relationships with other payers, like Humana, like Florida Blue, etcetera.

Overall, we’ve accelerated a lot of things we were focused on before the closing of the deal.

I want to dive into the in-home assessments a little bit further. There’s been a lot of research conducted about Medicare Advantage plans utilizing those, through companies like Signify. Similar to a traditional home health or home care visit, you see things related to a patient’s health journey that you wouldn’t see otherwise. Can you explain, from your perspective, the value of those assessments?

The first thing I would share is that I wish everybody listening could go do a ride along with one of our clinicians. That’s the best way to experience in-home evaluations and the value to the member.

I’ve done dozens of these at this point since I’ve been at Signify. And every single time I do it, I come out of it with this renewed sense of energy and purpose, because it’s so obvious the value that you provide to the member.

The minimum scenario is you’re connecting with a human being and listening to their health care issues. That alone provides tremendous value. And then we go above and beyond that by basically assessing what drugs they’re taking, highlighting questions to ask for their primary care provider. We’re giving them this end-to-end strategy on how to work on their health.

Anecdotally, it just feels amazing to do these visits.

To give you some numbers, our clinicians spend – on average – two to two and a half more time in the home than an appointment in an office setting.

What you can imagine is that extended period of time allows you to do, again, a much more comprehensive visit on health history – where things have been, and where they’re going.

I assume that it is nice to now be in a situation – for Signify and for patients – where patients can easily be connected to other health care services, such as primary care. There’s value in being able to bank on those connections, for all parties involved, no?

That’s exactly right.

Our clinicians are amazing, and all of them want to do something to help that individual. It’s not about just doing the visit and moving on, they want to make sure they’re taking care of themselves. And since we’ve been acquired, we’ve leaned into those kinds of partnerships with our sister companies, whether it be MinuteClinic, or the pharmacy, or Oak Street.

We did this huge program with Oak Street Health last year around finding members a primary care provider. We can get them scheduled for a primary care visit, and make sure that we close that loop. This is a product capability that we’ve built over the last several years, we call it care coordination pathways. Post-visit, how do we get you into the follow-up step, whatever that step might be.

I also imagine the more in-home evaluations you do on behalf of MA, those beget even more visits because entities are realizing the value of them. You’re able to show the results of patients previously visited in the home.

That’s exactly right. Last year, we closed almost 10 million care gaps across all the visits that we did. That certainly helps highlight the value of the visit to our health plan partners, and keeps them wanting us to do more of these things.

It’s about gap identification, but it’s also about a pleasant member experience – have the halo effect around the members. Letting them know that this is what it feels like to be a part of this health plan, to have someone in the home, to be connected to services.

Those things help contribute to potential growth. I will also add to that, while our core and our historical growth has been in Medicare Advantage, we are seeing increasing demand from Affordable Care Act and Medicaid plans.

You’re an Optum veteran, a company very much so in the home-based care game, through LHC Group and potentially through Amedisys here shortly. Humana is in a similar position with CenterWell. CVS Health owns Signify and Oak Street, while Walgreens backs VillageMD and owns CareCentrix. Why do you think this trend has materialized, and how will it change health care moving forward?

It’s a great question, and I think about this a lot.

And I believe we’re building these things because this is what members want.

I spend a lot of time with customers of various stripes, trying to understand what their needs are, where the pain points are, and then how we can help solve those. And one of the more obvious trends in health care over the last few years has been the realization that they don’t want to go into an office setting.

Some people want the visit to come to them.

And it’s all of us noticing this broader trend of how we make things more convenient, and help the person get care in their home rather than forcing them to go to another setting. And I believe that, as this happens at a greater and greater frequency, that the limiter will be around: How can you economically do that?

Because home visits can be more expensive. There’s a whole different apparatus of cost that you have to build in order to schedule 3, 4 or 5 million appointments, and that’s probably the rate limiter. But my hope is that as more and more demand comes from members and patients for these kinds of services, that economic picture will fix itself – and expand the number of services that can be done in the home.

If at all, how do you currently work with home health and home care providers?

We don’t today. But that’s something that is possible through the care coordination pathways product.

There’s nothing limiting us from doing that, other than conversations with our health plan partners and those entities to make sure that that’s turned on. I have had partnership conversations with different home health providers. And we’re starting to explore more of that in the rest of 2024. But nothing that has been sort of finalized at this point. But I would say again – the apparatus is built for it. So the only thing preventing us is making sure we find the right, most sensical partnership.

Where do you want Signify to be in three to five years?

To me, it’s really two things, at least from a product offering perspective. One is to continue to extend that core business. Can we try to do more visits across Medicare Advantage, the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid customers? That’s key.

The second is, can we do more in the home? And I would note two sub-themes under that. We do lots of diagnostic testing in the home, we call it our diagnostic and preventative services or DPS product line. We believe there’s a lot more room to grow in doing testing in the home. We want to do that at a larger scale.

And then the second sub theme under doing more in the home is are there adjacent services we could provide, like caretaking? What else could we send a Signify person in the home to do?

We’re actively in the process of figuring that out, so we can extend more services to our members.

And then, do you have a short- or long-term prediction for health care broadly that you can share with us?

The consumerization of health care will continue to make progress.

Health care companies will be focused on becoming more customer-oriented companies. That will drive us to do more of meeting the consumer where they are, which we believe again, is going to be in the home. They want convenience, they want things to be easier. So, you’ll see more and more of that.

Delivering meds to your doorstep, delivering care in the home. There’s so much more that we can do there. We’re just we’re just scratching the surface.

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Thanks to impactful, large-scale transactions over the last decade, the collective face of home-based care has changed forever.

Traditional providers in both home health care and personal home care have merged. Payers became involved in the home-based care space like never before. Of late, retailers have too.

But it’s often easy to forget how the current landscape became what it is.

Below, Home Health Care News takes a look at some of the most important and impactful deals in home-based care over the last decade – deals that explain, in part, where the home health and home care industries are today.

‘Big time’ provider deals

This past decade’s first blockbuster remained one of the most impactful throughout the last 10 years.

In 2014, April Anthony’s Encompass Home Health & Hospice was acquired by HealthSouth Corporation for $750 million. HealthSouth took a swing at home health and hospice, merging an in-patient facility business with a post-acute care business.

Four years later, HealthSouth would rebrand completely, taking on the home health and hospice entity’s name. Encompass Health Corp. (NYSE: EHC) still exists today, but is again without post-acute care capabilities.

The HealthSouth-Encompass deal is like a few other deals in home health care, in that it set off a domino effect and a winding life cycle of a home health entity.

Anthony left Encompass Health in 2021, and after her home health and hospice company operated as a segment within the larger organization for nearly a decade, Encompass Home Health & Hospice was spun off into its own public company: Enhabit Inc. (NYSE: EHAB).

That happened in 2022, and two years later, Enhabit may land in the hands of a different owner after it concludes its own strategic review. Anthony now runs VitalCaring, which is backed by her, The Vistria Group and Nautic Partners.

Over the decade, larger health care organizations like Encompass Health have also bundled up services, and also unbundled them.

For instance, Brookdale Senior Living (NYSE: BKD) had one of the largest home health footprints for a long time. After COVID-19 woes, however, it offloaded that to a health system eager to get into home health care: HCA Healthcare (NYSE: HCA). LHC Group would later acquire some of the assets jointly owned by Brookdale and HCA Healthcare.

Ascension Health, too, teamed up with TowerBrook to buy the home health and hospice provider Compassus in 2019.

A theme that has been a mainstay, and will likely remain a mainstay, is health systems changing course on their strategic planning – and deciding whether to own home health care themselves or focus on core operations and partner with home health care instead.

“You’re seeing a lot of these facility-based providers divesting or spinning off assets,” Chaz Bauer, director at Fifth Third Securities, told Home Health Care News. “They realize they have fundamentally two different businesses. They’re very related and intertwined. But fundamentally, you have these facility-based businesses that are very centralized models, very capital intensive. Whereas home-based care businesses, they’re very decentralized; they’re very capital-light. Part of the motivation there – in unbundling – is they can unlock value for their shareholders by splitting those businesses.”

But then there’s the M&A that has come from within the home health sector itself.

For instance, “the merger of equals” that turned LHC Group into a true home-based care powerhouse.

In late 2017, LHC Group agreed to merge with Almost Family in a $2.4 billion transaction. A straight line can be drawn from that deal to UnitedHealth Group’s (NYSE: UNH) acquisition of LHC Group, which was finalized in 2023.

LHC Group and Almost Family’s merger is not an anomaly, either. Not long after, Great Lakes Caring, National Home Health Care and Jordan Health Services combined in a three-way merger to create another one of the largest home health companies in the U.S.: Elara Caring.

That deal was powered by the PE firms Blue Wolf Capital Partners and Kelso & Company.

PE money in home-based care has turned a lot of sizable providers into powerhouses. The aforementioned PE firms – Blue Wolf, Kelso, Vistria and Nautic – have all played a part in that, in the transactions mentioned already and otherwise.

That will also continue, particularly as some of the holding periods of the largest companies turn over. There’s also a chance, however, that PE firms direct more attention to other parts of home-based care – like personal care – given the uncertainty surrounding home health payment rates.

In home care, Vistria and Centerbridge Partners uplifted Help at Home, turning it into one of the largest providers of home- and community-based services (HCBS) in the country.

Waud Capital recently acquired the large home care franchise Senior Helpers. Wellspring Capital Management acquired Interim HealthCare’s parent company Caring Brands International in 2021. Last September, The Halifax Group acquired Comfort Keepers from Sodexo.

PE has always been involved in home care. Bain Capital’s 2018 creation of Arosa, one of the largest non-franchised home care companies in the country, is one past example.

In the future, it’ll be interesting to see if PE will drive more large-scale, impactful deals like it has in home health care over the last decade.

Payers enter the fold

Any commentary on the biggest deals in home-based care over the last decade needs to note increased payer involvement.

Enter Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM).

When people think of the company’s home-based care investments, most go straight to its takeover of Kindred at Home.

But let’s take a step out of the last decade, just for a second.

In 2011, Humana acquired the home-based care provider SeniorBridge, which was doing just $72 million in annual revenue at the time. When that deal was announced, it was not exactly frontpage news. But one could argue that kickstarted a chain of investments that changed the M&A landscape in home-based care forever.

“SeniorBridge fills a growing market need and is consistent with Humana’s focus on delivering clinical care for seniors in their homes,” Michael B. McCallister, Humana’s chairman and CEO at the time, said in a statement. “Acquiring SeniorBridge will immediately expand Humana’s existing clinical capabilities with the addition of SeniorBridge’s national network of 1,500 care managers. The company does a terrific job of reducing hospital readmissions and emergency-room utilization, all while helping seniors achieve lifelong well-being.”

Humana’s home-based care thesis was already there, but the SeniorBridge deal was likely the deal that set the stage for what eventually became CenterWell.

“The deal was a game changer. I was initially surprised by the size of the transaction. It was pretty small by Humana standards,” Mertz Taggart Managing Partner Cory Mertz told HHCN. “It didn’t take long for Humana to tout the savings SeniorBridge created for their membership, saving it billions of dollars within the first couple years of the deal, by keeping their members at home and out of the hospital.”

Nearly 13 years later, Humana is one of the largest home health providers in the country through CenterWell Home Health.

The company, with the help of the PE firms TPG Capital and Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe (WCAS), acquired and merged Kindred at Home and Curo Health Services. Yet another home health and hospice powerhouse was formed, this time under the watch of one of the largest payers in the country.

In 2021, Humana opted to take over a remaining 60% of the enterprise (it had previously owned 40%), which was worth over $8 billion at the time.

In 2022, it divested the hospice and home care operations of Kindred to Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CD&R). Those divested assets became what is now known as Gentiva, led by David Causby, the former CEO of Kindred at Home.

The home health assets Humana held onto are now under CenterWell Home Health. CenterWell, overall, includes primary care, pharmacy and home health services.

In 2024, most large payers – namely the ones with large MA memberships – have some sort of home-based care capabilities. That was not the case when Humana acquired SeniorBridge way back when.

“This has been an ongoing development, and it’s really just vertical integration,” Bauer said. “The thought is: why not get into that downstream, and then be able to more directly control those costs and quality outcomes on the payer side?”

The other heavily involved payer is the only one that has a leg up on Humana in MA: UnitedHealth Group.

UnitedHealth Group’s Optum already had a variety of health care provider assets, but it decided to make its first big home-based care splash early in 2022 when it announced the $5.4 billion acquisition of LHC Group.

While payers liked the thought of vertical integration, large providers like LHC Group were also recognizing an existential threat to home health business: MA penetration. More MA beneficiaries meant fewer traditional Medicare beneficiaries, which meant a less sturdy financial leg to stand on.

UnitedHealth Group further cemented its interest not long after, when it made a $3.3 billion all-cash offer for Amedisys. That deal was agreed to in June of 2023, but is still pending.

Though UnitedHealth Group may have to divest some Amedisys assets to finalize the deal, the company will most likely have the largest home health market share when that deal closes. Estimates suggest Optum will have about 10% of the U.S. home health market under its belt.

Not only are payers now involved in the home health industry, but they are also creating scale.

“You can make an argument that Optum acquiring LHC group, and now Amedisys, is a scale transaction, like ones we’ve seen before,” Bauer said. “Because it puts together two of the largest providers to make an industry leader.”

New kids on the block

Like payers before them, another group of companies is now firmly involved in home-based care investment: retailers.

In fact, they’re so invested, they may not be labeled as just retailers five to 10 years from now.

CVS Health (NYSE: CVS) has a new health care services segment dubbed CVS Healthspire. Walgreens Boots Alliance (Nasdaq: WBA) has the same with its U.S. Healthcare segment.

Both of those segments are arguably the future of their respective parent organizations. And both include home-based care services.

Payers and retailers have different business models, but tend to want the same thing: pharmacy, primary care and home-based care services.

In 2020, Walgreens made an over $1 billion investment in VillageMD, a home- and community-focused primary care provider. After subsequent investments, it has backed VillageMD with over $6 billion.

After that, Walgreens found its next health care services asset in the health-at-home solutions platform CareCentrix. Though he is no longer in the position, CareCentrix’s former CEO, John Driscoll, was the initial leader of Walgreens new U.S. Healthcare segment.

“We continue to see strong results and potential for growth from our partnership with CareCentrix. Our full acquisition further accelerates our transformation to become a consumer-centric health care company, leveraging innovative platforms that extend our capabilities into fast-growing segments of health care,” former Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer said at the time. “CareCentrix is key to offering services to our patients at every stage of the care continuum, and to driving long-term, sustainable growth as part of our U.S. Healthcare strategy.”

Not to be outdone, CVS Health agreed to acquire the home- and value-based care enabler Signify Health in 2022 for $8 billion. Shortly after that, it got its primary care provider, too, with the over $10 billion acquisition of Oak Street Health.

While none of these assets are traditional home health or home care assets, this retailer involvement represents a seismic change in U.S. health care – and home-based care is a major part of it.

These companies could go after more assets in the future, or they could become major partners for those traditional providers.

Honorable mentions

It’s impossible to highlight every deal, but there are some that don’t fit perfectly into “themes” that are still worth mentioning.

The home care technology company Honor acquired the home care franchise brand Home Instead in 2021, for instance. In lieu of strictly partnering with providers to see its vision through, Honor opted to purchase Home Instead to speed up the process. The jury is still out on that deal, however.

Prior to agreeing to become a part of Optum, Amedisys also made plenty of deals that turned it into a multi-billion-dollar business.

It acquired the hospital-at-home platform Contessa Health in 2021 for $250 million.

It acquired Compassionate Care for $340 million in 2018, and AseraCare Hospice in 2020 for $235 million. Those two deals significantly bolstered its hospice arm.

Modivcare (Nasdaq: MODV) entered into the personal care game in a real way with its $575 million acquisition of Simplura Health Group in 2020 and its $340 million deal for CareFinders Total Care in 2021.

BrightSpring and PhaMerica completed a merger in 2019 that eventually led to today’s BrightSpring Health Services (Nasdaq: BTSG), which is now a public home-based care company.

Finally, Aveanna (Nasdaq: AVAH) – formerly a pediatric provider – entered into the home-based senior care world with its $345 million acquisition of Comfort Care Home Health in 2021 and its acquisition of Accredited Home Care for about $200 million later that year.

Addus Homecare Corporation (Nasdaq: ADUS) has executed several high-profile transactions of its own, most recently acquiring Tennessee Quality Care in a $106 million deal.

The post The Most Game-Changing Home-Based Care Blockbusters Of The Last Decade appeared first on Home Health Care News.

Among the grant recipients is Phoenix-based Home Assist Health. The CVS Health Foundation has earmarked $2.1 million over three years between Home Assist Health, Valleywise Health and Advance.

“We are so grateful and honored,” Sara Wilson, president and CEO of Home Assist Health, told Home Health Care News. “It’s very humbling to have, what we see as these giants, wanting to partner with us, and recognizing the power that people have in improving the health and well-being of other people.”

Home Assist Health is a home-based care provider that provides a variety of care services, such as personal care, housekeeping and respite care.

The company has been working closely with Valleywise Health for the past few years, as part of a food pharmacy project that was partially funded by CVS. The project helped individuals who had an uncontrolled diabetic status, and who experienced food insecurity, get access to healthy diabetic compliant foods.

Last year, when Valleywise Health pursued the CVS grant, the health system invited Home Assist Health to be one of its partners for this endeavor.

“[Valleywise Health] invited us to be one of the partners to help focus on those social determinants of health, and put in place interventions from the home environment, and provide health coaching, education and navigation,” Wilson said.

The grant funding will go toward driving integrated diabetes management services. This includes things like home care and monitoring, as well as medically tailored food boxes and educational resources.

In other words, the funds allow the company to further build on the work it has been doing in this area. It will also empower individuals to take their health into their own hands, Wilson noted.

“At the end of the day, that patient we’re there to support is doing the work,” she said. “We’re not doing it for them. We’re giving them the information, the resources, the education, the accountability, so that they’re successful in their own health independence.”

As part of the collaboration, eligible patients that are referred to Home Assist Health through CVS Health Zone and Valleywise Health will receive a home visit from the company’s care staff. These patients will receive culturally aligned education and coaching, according to Wilson.

“For instance, if they’re primarily Spanish speaking, we’ll use their language and then we work with them to improve their health independence,” she said. “When we’ve done this in the past, we’ve seen their emergency department visits drop. They’re making proper use of their primary care doctors and specialty appointments. We reduce avoidable admissions, as well as readmissions, and then we see pretty consistent improvements in their health vitals labs and overall quality of life.”

Overall, Wilson believes that the awarded grant speaks to CVS’ enthusiasm when it comes to care in the home.

“What I understand is that CVS was very excited about the opportunity of bringing in a home care partner, where we can actually help address these issues from the home space,” she said. “That was something they were excited about doing here in Arizona. For us, it’s a wonderful opportunity to really demonstrate, with the spotlight of CVS, the power that home care has. There’s not been as much attention on how home care has these very real positive impacts on individual health and well-being.”

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Seniors have more options than ever when choosing MA plans. But a few of the top companies continue to gain market share.

Specifically, UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH), Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM) and CVS Health (NYSE: CVS) – through Aetna – continue to outpace competitors.

Last year, UnitedHealthcare owned 29% of the MA market with 8.9 million beneficiaries; Humana owned 18% of the market with 5.5 million beneficiaries; and CVS Health owned

11% of the market with 3.3 million beneficiaries, according to Kaiser Family Foundation.

Blue Cross Blue Shield plans owned a significant portion of the market, too, with 14% and 4.4 million beneficiaries.

Between 2023 and 2024, the largest plans continued to see growth. UnitedHealthcare gained 478,000 new members, Humana added 412,000 new members and CVS Health added 544,000 members, according to a Chartis analysis.

Meanwhile, Elevance Health’s (NYSE: ELV) beneficiary total dropped by 25,000. Centene (NYSE: CNC) had an even greater fall off, losing 212,000 members.

Cigna (NYSE: CI) also agreed to sell its MA business to Health Care Service Corporation for $3.7 billion.

Over 80% of the 1.7 million new MA beneficiaries went to for-profit plans – such as UnitedHealthcare, Humana and Aetna – according to Chartis.

What’s noteworthy about the biggest players in the MA space is their at-home care ambitions.

UnitedHealth Group is directly involved in home health care. It owns LHC Group and is in the process of acquiring Amedisys. Those are two of the largest home health entities in the country.

Humana owns CenterWell Home Health, also one of the largest home health entities in the country.

CVS Health does not directly own home health assets, but does own the at-home care enabler Signify Health.

Home health providers have generally had difficulty getting fair rates from MA plans for home health services, despite many of their parent companies going after home health assets.

Other trends to consider

For home care providers, these plans’ direction when it comes to supplemental benefits is worth paying attention to.

“Similar to plan options, the prevalence of supplemental benefit offerings (which have increased significantly in recent years) seems to be slowing and even declining for some benefits, suggesting that ‘more is not always better,’” authors of the Chartis analysis wrote. “The proliferation of both plan options and supplemental benefits is driving proposed regulations from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services related to agent/broker compensation, D-SNP integration, and supplemental benefit reporting.”

Experts in the space still generally believe that supplemental benefit utilization – and particularly in-home support services, which home care providers help administer – will hold up. That’s because the plans that are believers in those benefits will continue to lean into them, even if others drop benefits to deal with rate cuts.

But CVS Health CFO Tom Cowhey did acknowledge this week that some supplemental benefits could be on the chopping block.

“What are some of the things that we’re going to need to look at?” Cowhey said at the 45th Annual Raymond James Institutional Investor Conference. “I think supplemental benefits have to be on that list. I think ourselves – and probably all the industry – are going to have to look at all the benefits across the board and decide where it is that we want to cut. But I know that supplemental benefits will be part of that conversation.”

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“We are now meaningfully looking at the entire portfolio of assets that we have to ensure that everything we have is going to drive the growth that we aspire to deliver,” Wentworth said Monday at the 44th annual TD Cowen Healthcare Conference.

Walgreens, like CVS Health, is betting a lot on its health care services division.

Walgreens’ U.S. Healthcare segment includes the care-at-home solutions platform CareCentrix, along with the primary care provider VillageMD, which it has invested over $6 billion into over recent years.

“In April, we are sitting down with our board and going through a strategic review,” Wentworth said. “There will not be a big bang after that, where we announce and unveil some incredibly new Walgreens. That will be the starting gun for a lot of work that we have to deliver.”

This comes about a month after Walgreens announced that it had a new leader of U.S. Healthcare.

Formerly, Jeff Driscoll – the ex-CEO of CareCentrix – was the head of that segment. Now, Mary Langowski has taken up the reins. Langowski previously served as the CEO of the managed services organization Solera Health. She also spent time at CVS, where she served as the chief strategy and corporate development officer.

“This doesn’t just happen overnight,” Wentworth said. “By and large, the broader set of questions that we’ve got to answer will probably take a couple of years to really begin to show fruit.”

Supplemental benefits

CVS Health has a similar segment to Walgreens’ U.S. Healthcare, which it dubs CVS Healthspire.

That includes Signify Health and Oak Street Health, among other assets.

But Cowhey’s most noteworthy comments – which came on Tuesday at the 45th Annual Raymond James Institutional Investor Conference – were around Aetna and supplemental benefits.

Medicare Advantage (MA) plans have the flexibility to offer supplemental benefits through two pathways: the primarily health-related pathway and the Special Supplemental Benefits for the Chronically Ill (SSBCI) pathway.

A benefit that can be provided through both pathways – and once a reason for much bullishness from personal care providers on MA – is in-home support services (IHSS).

While benefit offerings – and IHSS offerings – steadily rose for a few years, plans pulled back in 2024.

Aetna, which is a part of CVS, has still remained mostly committed to home-based care benefits.

That could change, however.

“What are some of the things that we’re going to need to look at?” Cowhey said. “I think supplemental benefits have to be on that list. I think ourselves – and probably all the industry – are going to have to look at all the benefits across the board and decide where it is that we want to cut. But I know that supplemental benefits will be part of that conversation.”

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Home-based care providers avoiding the shift to value-based care are running out of time and excuses.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) wants 100% of traditional Medicare beneficiaries and the “vast majority of Medicaid beneficiaries” in accountable care relationships by 2030.

Home health providers are already under the Home Health Value-Based Purchasing (HHVBP) Model, which is, by definition, a value-based care model.

Plus, the share of Medicare Advantage (MA) beneficiaries is increasing, while the share of traditional Medicare beneficiaries is declining. MA plans pay less for home-based care services, and value-based arrangements may be the best way for providers to achieve healthy financial relationships with those plans.

Even if providers are not capable of moving fully toward value-based care on their own, there are plenty of partners that can help them get there. They’re not just health plans.

There are value-based payment enablers, risk-bearing delivery organizations and hybrids of the two that can be leveraged by providers.

Healthcare Management Administrators (HMA) recently released a 70-page report on the current value-based care landscape. CMS also recently unveiled a value-based care spotlight webpage to aid providers.

This week’s exclusive, members-only HHCN+ Update pulls from those new resources, as well as recent conversations with home-based care leaders, to paint a picture of what value-based care currently looks like from a home-based care provider perspective.

Value-based care entities

When regulators point toward and acknowledge a trend they’ll be following over the next decade, the private sector generally listens closely.

As value-based care has gone from a pie-in-the-sky term with no real meaning behind it to something legitimate, more opportunities have arisen for providers interested in moving further toward value.

“At the start of the movement, value-based arrangements primarily involved traditional providers and payers engaging in relatively straight-forward and limited contractual arrangements,” HMA’s report read. “In recent years, the industry has expanded organically to include a broader ecosystem of risk-bearing care delivery organizations and provider enablement entities with capabilities and business models aligned with the functions and aims of accountable care.”

It’s worth noting that most home health providers have been making shifts toward value, particularly after the implementation of the Patient-Driven Grouping Model (PDGM), which de-incentivizes volume.

But it’s also worth noting that providers were entrenched in the fee-for-volume cycle for a long time. Whether they would admit it or not, undoing those habits is an ongoing chore.

Luckily, they don’t have to do it all on their own.

HMA identified three different types of entities worth paying attention to in the current value-based care landscape, for instance:

– Value-based payment enablers: “Entities that partner with providers to help them in the transition to value; share responsibility for the cost and quality outcomes; does not own provider asset.”

One example given by HMA here was Caravan Health, which was acquired by Signify Health in 2022. Signify Health is an at-home care solutions enabler owned by CVS Health (NYSE: CVS). It is not a traditional home health provider itself, but does partner with home health providers.

“We talked a lot through this journey about home health,” CVS Health CFO Shawn Guertin said after the Signify acquisition, also in 2022. “And the value-based care capabilities that this brings us is where a lot of the power is, I think, for the long haul. I’m very excited about the opportunity that Caravan could provide us for the future.”

– Risk-bearing delivery organizations: “Entities designed to deliver value-based care from the outset and assume accountability for the cost and quality outcomes of patient populations.”

Oak Street Health, which is now also owned by CVS Health, is one of these risk-bearing delivery organizations. It’s clear what CVS Health is trying to do from a strategic perspective.

Another entity mentioned is CenterWell, the provider organization owned by Humana (NYSE: HUM). CenterWell has three pillars currently: pharmacy, primary care and home health.

Over the next few years, CenterWell President Dr. Sanjay Shetty wants home health care to play an even larger role in the entity’s overall value-based care goals.

“I think the intent, with our pivot into value-based models for the home, is to first prove [things out],” Shetty told me this week. “We are making those investments within the business and within the clinical model, in order to change the way we’re doing things – to orient the teams on the ground towards the outcome. We’re still probably in the early days of that journey, but it’s been exciting.”

– Hybrids: “Entities that own risk-bearing delivery assets and offer VBP enablement services to external providers.”

A prime hybrid, which HHCN has covered extensively, is VillageMD. A primary care provider with a home- and community-based focus, VillageMD is backed by Walgreens Boots Alliance (Nasdaq: WBA). The latter has put up over $6 billion behind the former’s business.

“Home-based care is just going to become even more important,” Dr. Clive Fields, VillageMD’s co-founder and CMO, told Home Health Care News in 2021. “With the use of technology, teams and analytics, we think we can drive the same kinds of results for people who previously just may not have that access, either because of where they lived or because of the transportation that was available to them.”

Where providers stand

Some providers are taking on risk without a partner, through a Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE), for instance. Some are partnering with PACE programs, too.

Other home-based care providers are partnering with health plans in value-based arrangements, though historically those have been on a more limited basis.

Home-based health care is lower-cost care, and also drives desirable outcomes when delivered correctly. Therefore, the aforementioned three types of value-based entities could all use home-based care providers. At the same time, the providers would also benefit from engaging with organizations already set up to deliver legitimate value- and risk-based care.

The first step is generally a cultural change, which is something I noted in last week’s update as well.

“I think the first relationship that you must establish – and this sounds a little hokey – is a pretty good internal harmony with your employee base, your stakeholders, your board, your governance, structure, whatever that might be,” Chapters Health System Andrew Molosky told me last month. “Because nothing will waylay an organization faster than when you have people viewing the priorities differently.”

CMS’ spotlight on value-based care reaffirms their commitment to the 2030 initiative, but it also proves just how behind many providers still are.

The webpage goes over some of the basics of value-based care – why it matters and how it can be achieved.

“CMS just launched a new Value-Based Care Spotlight page that explains in plain language what we mean by value-based care,” CMS Deputy Administrator and Director Liz Fowler said in a statement. “How it supports patients and providers, and why value-based care is important.”

Even if most home-based care providers are behind, value-based care will have to wait.

Time is of the essence, but health plans, patients and risk-enabled providers need home-based health care to truly provide the value-based care CMS wants.

“As with other healthcare organizations, entities in this segment are expanding their in-home care capabilities to support patients and caregivers in low-cost, convenient settings and a growing cohort of home-based innovators is emerging, each with slightly different approaches to optimizing in-home care,” the HMA report read.

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