Weekend short takes: Merative’s $25M funding, Risant closes on Cone Health, Aya buys Cross Country staffing for $615M, Supreme Group acquires Amendola PR

December 6, 2024 | by

Merative data analytics raises $25 million from Morgan Health. The latter, a JPMorgan Chase business unit focused on employer-sponsored insurance, is investing in Merative to expand its capabilities for employers to manage data with integrated tools and have a more comprehensive, integrated view of health care quality and cost to make improvements. Merative’s products include the employer-focused platform Truven, their employer/payer analytics Health Insights, and their MarketScan databases of real world claims data plus insights for evidence studies. Merative’s markets include employers, health plans, healthcare providers, governments, life sciences, and benefits advisors. Their majority owner is Francisco Partners. Release, MedCity News

Risant Health closed on the purchase of Cone Health of Greensboro, North Carolina. It was originally announced in July. Cone has four acute care hospitals, a behavioral health facility, an insurance plan, and an ACO with 200,000 patients. It is located within the Piedmont Triad metro area and its surrounding counties. It is Risant’s second system after the founding system of Geisinger in Pennsylvania. There was no transaction cost but Risant will provide a minimum of $1 billion in capital to the system in the next five years.  Cone Health closed its 2023 fiscal year on 30 September with $2.8 billion in total operating revenue. Risant is Kaiser Permanente’s nonprofit/community-based hospital system initiative. FierceHealthcare, Cone Health Release

Healthcare staffing is worth some large cash, with Aya Healthcare buying Cross Country Healthcare for $615 million. Their offer for Cross Country shares, traded on Nasdaq, is for $18.61 per share, a 67% premium over the closing price on 3 December. The Aya deal will take it private with an expected closing in the first half of 2025. Aya’s expertise is in travel nursing, allied health, and staffing for professionals in per diem, permanent, interim leadership, locum tenens, and non-clinical roles. Cross Country will remain as a separate brand in healthcare staffing and include providing clinical services in non-clinical settings, such as schools and homes. Release, Benzinga, Mobihealthnews

And in one last acquisition, independent PR agency Amendola Communications is being acquired by Supreme Group. Purchase price was not disclosed but current head Jodi Amendola will continue as president of the agency as a standalone operation under Supreme Group. Amendola is the fifth acquisition by Trinity Hunt Partners-backed Supreme since June 2023. Ms. Amendola was one of our Perspectives contributors in April. We wish them the best! Release

Mid-week news roundup: HarmonyCares $200M round, Risant to buy Cone Health, Courier Health’s $16.5M Series A; Coalition for Health AI loses HHS/FDA members; Weekend Read–reining in AI’s Wild West?

July 11, 2024 | by

In further Signs Of Life in healthcare funding and acquisitions:

In-home primary care provider HarmonyCares obtained $200 million in an unlettered round. Lead investors are General Catalyst, McKesson Ventures, and interestingly, an unnamed large national payer. Other investors are K2 HealthVentures with existing investors Rubicon Founders, Valtruis, HLM Capital, and Oak HC/FT. HarmonyCares provides in-home primary care to 70,000 patients in 15 states via 175-plus providers. Care teams include nurse care managers, social workers, and pharmacists, reinforced by 24-7 on-call support. The integrated model serves higher-needs patients through value-based care partnerships with Medicare Advantage plans and Medicare ACO programs via Centene, Aetna, and others. The fresh funding will be used for market expansion and scale up new technology for clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction. The company was founded as US Medical Management in 2013, became majority owned by Centene Corporation, which then sold it off as part of their 2021 divestitures. Release, FierceHealthcare, MedCityNews

Risant Health, the nonprofit/community-based hospital system initiative of Kaiser, intends to acquire Cone Health of Greensboro, North Carolina. Cone has five hospitals and an insurance plan. Purchase price was not disclosed, but Cone’s 2023 operating revenue was $2.8 billion. Closing the deal is dependent on the usual approvals. Cone plans to continue to operate independently. It is the second of five planned acquisitions with a $5 billion war chest that kicked off with Pennsylvania-based Geisinger that closed in April, The systems are being chosen for value-based care and population health models–as well as financial health and geographic expansion. Geisinger added $4.6 billion in a one-time gain to Kaiser’s bottom line last quarter.  MedCityNews, Healthcare Dive

Geisinger also experienced a massive data breach initiated by a former Nuance Communications employee that potentially exposed 1.2 million records. While it took place in late 2023, it was reported only last week. TTA 2 July

Courier Health added a $16.5 million Series A from Norwest Venture Partners and existing investor Work-Bench to its existing $4 million in seed funding. NYC-based Courier is a customer relationship management (CRM) platform to manage specialty medications across the patient journey, coordinating information for biopharma companies from patients and providers for field access, patient services, and marketing teams. Release, Endpoints

The Coalition for Health AI (CHAI) is losing two members out of HHS: Micky Tripathi and Troy Tazbaz. They were named in March to the CHAI board of directors as non-voting Federal liaisons. Both withdrew from the BOD due to potential Federal regulatory conflicts surfaced by Congress with this primarily private and for-profit organization. Dr. Tripathi is head of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC-HIT) and Acting Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer at the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Mr. Tazbaz is Director of the Digital Health Center of Excellence (DHCoE) at FDA. An FDA spokesperson told Healthcare Dive that Mr. Tazbaz is stepping down after the agency decided it no longer needed to participate in CHAI as a non-voting member. Hmmmm…..

Weekend Read: despite CHAI and other well-meaning agencies, including Federal, AI still resembles The Wild West. The author of this MedCityNews influencer piece points out that a faulty algorithm can make the difference between life and death. While he credits AI scribes for lightening provider load, AI is no quick fix or a bucket of cherries. FTA:

  • Bold claims abound but aren’t backed up by clinical research or regulatory oversight
  • Healthcare has become saturated with AI solutions that blur the line between what’s regulated and what isn’t. Clinicians have been left in the dark and are pushing back–the nurses’ protest against Kaiser is but one example.
  • AI development should be viewed through a regulatory-grade lens. The ability to demonstrate that a solution is positively impacting the care of a patient and not creating patient safety issues is crucial.
  • Clinical AI needs to go through the FDA approval process and developers need to understand that process.
  • The solution is not there to replace the clinician

Of course, this is all happening as healthcare is targeted by ransomware bad actors–and while health systems are laying off experienced IT staff, who have to be part of this evaluation. The above-mentioned Kaiser laid off well over a hundred in the past few months. Becker’s