Travis Messina, co-founder of Contessa Health, is no longer the CEO of the company, he announced on his LinkedIn. He had served in the role for eight years.
Contessa Health is one of the foremost at-home, high-acuity care enablers in the country. In 2021, Amedisys Inc. (Nasdaq: AMED) acquired the company for $250 million. Since then, the former has become an integral part of the latter’s strategy to provide more types of care in the home while striking creative deals with payers and health systems.
“I am extremely flattered that some of the Contessa Health and Amedisys team members would take time to celebrate my last day with Contessa and send me off in style,” Messina wrote last week. “While I shared this with everyone when I made the decision several months ago to step back from Contessa, I’d be remiss if I didn’t take another chance to send a massive thank you to every Contessa team member – past and present – every health system or provider that has partnered with Contessa, every investor in Contessa and the entire Amedisys team for your contributions.”
Based in Nashville, Contessa Health partners with 11 health systems and 30 health plans, serving patients across eight states.
The company launched in 2015, long before the public health emergency and all the care it brought home with it. Its initial investors included the likes of the Atlanta-based Noro-Moseley Partners, the San Francisco-based Health Velocity Capital and BlueCross BlueShield Venture Partners.
Eventually, under Messina’s leadership, it became a hospital-at-home pioneer, while also expanding palliative care and skilled nursing facility (SNF) care in the home.
Now a subsidiary of Amedisys, Contessa – though a near-term drag on the company’s financials – has been a key focus for Amedisys over the last year.
Amedisys itself has a new CEO in Richard Ashworth, who officially began his role on April 10. But Paul Kusserow – its former CEO, and current chairman of the board – recently said that Contessa would be a larger focus of his moving forward.
When Ashworth’s hiring was announced, Kusserow said he would “provide support through the transition, with a continued strategic focus on Contessa Health.”
After Messina’s departure was decided on, Kendall Hagood — who has been with Contessa since 2016 — was also promoted to senior vice president of operations, an Amedisys spokesperson told HHCN. Dr. Rob Moskowitz will continue to serve as chief medical officer, a role he’s occupied since October 2022.
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