Elevance Health Inc. (NYSE: ELV) is going all-in on Carelon Services — the company’s provider services arm — as a future growth driver.
“Carelon has, and will continue to add, attractive capabilities that we can scale rapidly and sustainably over the long term,” Elevance CEO Gail Boudreaux said during the company’s fourth quarter earnings call on Wednesday.
Based in Indianapolis, Elevance Health is a large managed care company and provider.
Boudreaux noted that Carelon Services is poised for strong growth in 2024 due to the onboarding of new clients, and continued expansion of services. This expansion of services includes the launch of Carelon Insights, and the rollout of comprehensive Carelon behavioral health management services.
The company also believes that the growth of its health benefits businesses will drive revenue for Carelon Services.
Value-based care, and streamlining processes to ensure better outcomes, also remains top of mind.
“We have multiple-year arrangements with our value-based providers,” Boudreaux said. “We’re always looking at a couple of things. One, make sure that it’s a win-win, and we’re aligned on cost quality outcomes, and stars. We spent a lot of time focusing on some of the ways that we can get data back and forth more simply. We’ve integrated the way we share data back and forth, and that’s really around closing gaps in care, and simplifying the process under which we work with those providers.”
Elevance Health’s goal is for this to become ubiquitous across all of the company’s value-based care providers.
“We made a lot of progress there, and dramatically improved the time to action with those providers, and I think that’s important, because it gives them data to act on and that improves their outcomes,” Boudreaux said. “We have seen our value-based providers perform better in this circumstance.”
During the call, Elevance Health also touched on its recent acquisition of the infusions services company Paragon Healthcare.
“The acquisition expands our capabilities, catering to consumers with complex and chronic needs, who could benefit the most from our approach to whole-person health,” Boudreaux said.
The purchase of Paragon Healthcare will complement Elevance Health’s suite of pharmacy services, which includes the company’s advanced home delivery service.
Overall, Elevance Health’s operating revenue for Q4 2023 was $42.5 billion, a 7% increase from Q4 2022.
The full year operating revenue for 2023 was $170 billion, a 9.3% increase from $155.7 billion in 2022.
Carelon Services’ operating revenue for Q4 2023 was $12.4 billion, a 14.1% increase from $10.9 billion in 2022.
“We delivered strong results every quarter of 2023, including in the fourth quarter, which is marked by solid top- and bottom-line growth and significant progress in the execution of our enterprise strategy to accelerate capabilities and services, invest in high-growth opportunities and optimize our businesses,” Mark Kaye, executive vice president and CFO at Elevance Health, said during the call.
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