When ‘the centre cannot hold’: three board members exit at Cano Health, failure looms at Bright Health Group

April 7, 2023 | by

Surely some revelation is at hand? The first: the high-profile board troubles at primary care provider Cano Health. Last Friday, three directors resigned loudly from the board: Barry Sternlicht, Elliot Cooperstone, and Lewis Gold. Sternlicht, the chairman of Starwood Capital Group and for some years the CEO of Starwood Hotels in the 1990s, is a ‘name’ real estate and private investor. The other two are hardly slouches: Cooperstone is founder and managing partner of private equity firm InTandem Capital Partners; Gold is co-founder and board chairman of behavioral health company Advanced Recovery Systems. They resigned as a group due to differences with the CEO and management. 

The trio filed a 13-D with the Securities and Exchange Commission as a partnership to change things, “including, but not limited to, the replacement of the CEO, sale of non-core assets and enhancement of shareholder value.” Sternlicht’s release detailed their grievances with CEO Marlow Hernandez, including dubious transactions with a Miami medical claims recovery company, MSP Recovery (also known as LifeWallet), but mainly around the burn-through of the $800 million PIPE raised along with the June 2021 SPAC via Sternlicht’s JAWS Acquisition Corp.–an eye-watering total of $1.4 billion for a valuation at that time of $4.4 billion. From his release, Sternlicht apparently could not get the time of day from Hernandez. “I have never witnessed such poor corporate governance at any company, let alone a public company, and I have been involved in at least nine and served as chairman or CEO of six.”

Certainly, there is a case around shareholder value. The stock has cracked by over 90% from the initial price of $15. Sternlicht also had $50 million reasons to be mad as an investor of that amount in the PIPE. Cano Health called his “method of resignation particularly reckless.” But one wonders what Cano’s physicians are thinking, as well as the health plans with which they work, when three high-profile board members bolt the company, one of them with a stellar track record and some fame, with prejudice. Yet the majority of the board members were seemingly fine with how the company was run.

Last October, Cano, a 4,000 employee value-based primary care provider to mainly underserved markets, had its tires kicked by CVS Health [TTA 21 Oct 22] but the deal never got beyond discussions, and Humana, which has a right-of-first-refusal, made no moves. Share price fell from that time from just above $8 to today’s close of $1.25 on the NYSE. The time may be right for a payer or a provider group to make a cheap pickup, but not if the company has intractable troubles–and now there is a deep-pocketed rival. MedCityNews, New Times (Miami)  The New Times article digs deeper into the MSP Recovery relationship and CEO John Ruiz. MSP Recovery specializes in collecting from primary insurers that don’t pay and put the burden on commercial or public plans like Medicare or Medicaid. As of December 2022, the company owed Cano roughly $60 million in receivables, not a drop in their bucket.

Now to Bright Health Group, an insurtech which may well be on the brink of utter failure and the dubious distinction of being one of the largest failures of a Minnesota business, if their local media (Star-Tribune, unfortunately tightly paywalled) is accurate. Reports one month ago were dire: investors were told that Bright was facing credit insolvency, having run through $350 million in revolving credit. It also violated a liquidity covenant and desperately needed $300 million to cover it by end of April.  This did not stop the company from paying out about $4 million in bonuses to its management team–outrageously at 100%. Two of the bonuses are to ex-company members. Meanwhile, hundreds of their once 2,800+ employee group are being discharged.

18 months ago, Bright Health seemed to be the most promising insurtech out there, with a healthy Medicare Advantage (MA) plan base, family and individual plans, substantial growth, acquisitions of Zipnosis (‘white label’ telehealth triage for health systems), development of the NeueHealth value-based care provider management network, and a blue-chip management group. But it also lost $1.5 billion in 2022 on top of $1.2 billion in 2021 and has $1.2 billion in debt. Bright exited individual and family plans in six states plus cut back MA expansion plans and will no longer offer individual, family, or Medicare Advantage plans outside of California.

With Bright Health shares down to $0.20 and delisting looming, Bright asked shareholders to attend a 4 May meeting to approve a reverse stock switch “at a ratio of not less than 1-for-15 and not greater than 1-for-80.” It’s just a small problem of the share price….

Far more disastrously for Bright, state departments of banking and insurance are taking action. Tennessee and Florida placed the company under supervision; reportedly Illinois is considering the same. Texas may precipitate matters. According to strategic analyst Ari Gottlieb, the Texas Department of Insurance is preparing to place Bright Health’s Texas subsidiary into receivership. Such an action will constitute an immediate Event of Default under Bright’s Credit Agreement. Bright can then choose default–or seek bankruptcy protection.

Shockingly, over a million Americans have had to find a new health plan due to what is happening at Bright. Now, where’s the Barry Sternlicht they need on the board to take action? Are the directors from investors like Bessemer and New Enterprise Associates in cloud-cuckoo land with management?

FierceHealthcare. Both Fierce’s and this article quote liberally from Ari Gottlieb’s posts on LinkedIn, the most incisive coverage this Editor has seen so far: Since Bright Health’s executive compensation approach is best described as pay-for-failure from one month ago, Bright Health’s $4 million pay-for-failure cash bonuses… from two weeks ago, and from earlier this week, The Texas Department of Insurance is preparing for anticipated litigation…  Others are listed in his feed here. 

Mid-week news roundup: CVS Health Virtual Primary Care launches, VA’s two-day Oracle Cerner EHR slowdown, and microsampling blood + wearables for multiple tests

January 27, 2023 | by

CVS Health finally has Virtual Primary Care up and running. First announced by CVS last May, Virtual Primary Care provides primary care, 24/7 on-demand care, and scheduled mental health services to Aetna members nationwide enrolled in eligible fully-insured and self-insured commercial health plans. Members in VPC can schedule urgent care, 24/7 on-demand care (that may vary by plan), an in-office primary care visit, Minute Clinic visits, and expanded virtual mental health services. Amwell announced that it would be the provider in August on their Q2 2022 earnings call. The release mentions that board-certified physicians and nurse practitioners will be delivering primary care services through physician-led care teams and coordinating with CVS pharmacists. This applies to virtual mental health services as well. (One trusts that this in-network approach will avoid the problems they experienced with Cerebral and Done Health on their prescribed ADHD drugs.) Health records, lab results, and medications are shareable via the patient CVS Health Dashboard. At this point, there is no mention of further rollouts to other plans. Becker’s.

Somebody threw sand in the Oracle Cerner EHR gears at the VA–and it started at MHS. A report from the Spokane Spokesman-Review seems to be the only report out there (other than HISTalk picking it up) on the two-day slowdown in the Oracle Cerner Millenium EHR rolled out at the VA and the Department of Defense’s Military Health System (MHS Genesis) that covers active duty. On Monday and Tuesday, there was a “major slowdown” that did not abate until Tuesday afternoon.  It affected more than half of all MHS providers, as well as VA clinics and hospitals in Washington, Idaho, Oregon, and Ohio. Mann-Grandstaff clinicians reported problems to the Spokesman, which contacted the VA. Their press secretary Terrence Hayes confirmed that changes made to the system by the DOD, which shares a database with the VA, “had the unintended consequence of interrupting services that provide connectivity to the network.” The system slowed down from screen to screen, requiring clinicians to work extra time to make all entries, and was not resolved until configuration changes were made. This is another incident adding to a Very Large Dogpile, including interoperability between VA and MHS versions, 498 outages between September 2020 and June 2022, plus two veteran deaths.

And maybe Stanford, forever associated with Theranos, is trying to get its reputation back–in running multiple blood tests on microsamples. A new paper published in Nature Biomedical Engineering by a group of 17 researchers led by Stanford Medicine determined that valid tests could be run on a microsample (10 μl) of blood that could be drawn from a finger prick at home to test for thousands of metabolites, lipids, cytokines, and proteins. This testing would be paired with data captured from wearables. They tested reactions to food (Ensure shake) and the effects of physical activity on blood with wearables monitoring heart rate and step count, plus a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) to profile individual physiological status, including cortisol. Unlike Theranos, it’s not done in a ‘lab in a box’ in a supermarket trying to duplicate (fake?) existing diagnostic tests, and it employs mass spectrometry molecule-sorting technology in a lab. Becker’s.

Interesting pickups from JPM on CVS, Talkspace, Veradigm backs Holmusk, ‘misunderstood’ Babylon Health; six takeaways

January 19, 2023 | by

Out of a decidedly soggy JPMorgan healthcare conference that concentrated mainly on pharma and biotech, there was some news in the downtrodden health tech and related areas. Selected from FierceHealthcare’s Heather Landi’s take:

CVS Health’s open checkbook for the right companies in primary care, provider enablement, and home health was a throwback to the palmy days of 2020-21. A big announcement at JPM was their investment in in-home kidney care and end-stage renal disease management provider Monogram Health. Their Series C raise of $375 million was lead-funded by CVS Health, Cigna Ventures, Humana, Memorial Hermann Health System, and SCAN.  Release, Mobihealthnews This added up to a busy January for CVS with leading Carbon Health‘s $100 million series D [TTA 11 Jan] and $25 million for Array Behavioral Care [TTA 12 Jan].

Talkspace, the cracked telemental health SPAC most recently rumored to be in buy talks with Amwell, touted their “defined, very significant path to profitability within a short period of time.” New CEO Jon Cohen, MD, a surgeon and veteran healthcare exec, touted the strength of the telemental health model, the effectiveness of their asynchronous messaging therapy for depression and anxiety,  and their market change from consumer to employers and health plans. Talkspace has some distance to go, quickly, with a loss through Q3 2022 of $61 million on revenues of $89 million and a share price today of $0.74, which means eventual delisting from Nasdaq. Is a quick buy in their future?

Veradigm, still settling in on their new corporate name, has its own bet on behavioral health data on the analytics side, with a lead investment in Holmusk‘s $45 million Series B. Holmusk will pull in de-identified patient data from Veradigm to their NeuroBlu Database.  Release

And on to Babylon Health, where Ali Parsa must feel like Eric Burdon of the 1960s blues group The Animals in the depth of being ‘misunderstood’. Dr. Parsa promises a path to breakeven by end of 2024.  Babylon’s revenue is on target to hit over $1 billion. They operate in over 15 countries with well over 5 million transactions. But their SPAC cracked too from a high of $272 per share after listing in October 2021 to today’s price just above $11, leaving a lot of investors in the lurch. Even though Q3 revenue increased by $288.9 million versus $74.5 million in 2021, an increase of $214.4 million or 3.9x, and the Q3 loss correspondingly widened to $89.9 million, the loss was significantly lower as a percentage of revenue. They are also converting from a foreign private issuer to a domestic, planning a reverse share split, and selling non-core businesses like the Meritage IPA [TTA 22 Nov 22] It’ll either be more correctly understood by Mr. Market or…be bought?

Arundhati Parmar in MedCityNews had a tart take on the proceedings, leading with the convergence of therapeutics with devices and data, Primary Care-Primary Care-Primary Care, billion-dollar bolt-on acquisitions that may be good for biopharma (but not necessarily so in health tech where integration is leading), and innovative therapies that don’t save but actually cost mo’ money. All of which is no surprise to our Readers. And why is there a JPM every year? Healthcare insanity may be catching.

Mid-week roundup: Teladoc gets BetterHelp to boost Q4 ’22 revenue; fundings for Array, Paytient, Telesair, three others; layoffs hit at Alphabet’s Verily, Cue Health

January 12, 2023 | by

Teladoc may finish 2022 better than expected, at least in revenue. At the JPMorgan (JPM) annual healthcare conference, CEO Jason Gorevic shared a revised but still preliminary projection that Q4 would finish up a tick higher than expected–between $633 million and $640 million in revenue, versus their projection during Q3 that the low side would be $625 million. FY2022 revenue was updated to be the $2.403 billion to $2.41 billion range. The big contributor? Their mental health app BetterHelp. Their growth, according to Mr. Gorevic, is “staggering’. Silicon Valley Bank (SVP) analyst Stephanie Davis calculated a growth rate of 43% for the business, up from previous management targets. Teladoc’s optimism is tempered by the no/slow growth economy projected for this year, both direct to consumer and corporate. To help boost the latter, it is launching a new app for health plan members and company employees access to all of Teladoc’s clinical programs. Healthcare Dive, Becker’s

Despite the uncertain economy, funding continues in various rounds, especially in still-hot areas such as remote/virtual behavioral therapy and payments, but nowhere near the bubbly level of 2021:

CVS Health’s open piggybank helped to fund NJ-based Array Behavioral Care’s $25 million Series C. Other investors included HLM Venture Partners, OSF Healthcare System, Wells Fargo, and three others. Array will use the funds to scale its virtual behavioral therapy platform.  Mobihealthnews, Crunchbase

In that interesting area called healthcare fintech, the cleverly-named Paytient now has an additional $40.5 million in Series B funding, bringing their total to $63 million. Paytient provides corporate employees, health plan members, and health system patients with a card-based Health Payment Account (HPA) that includes a line of credit. Release, Mobihealthnews 

In hospital-to-home respiratory care, still in stealth Telesair raised $22 million in Series A funding, led by Pasaca Capital with participation from existing and new investors such as Honeywell Investors, ZhenCheng Capital, Shangbay Capital plus three others. According to the release, funding will be used for the commercialization of the Bonhawa Respiratory Humidifier for use in the ICU and the development of a second-generation, revolutionary product for hospital-to-home. Mobihealthnews   

Also highlighted in Mobihealthnews‘ article is a $10 million Series B for ModifyHealth, which delivers prepared, medically tailored meals and provides advice from dieticians. ModifyHealth provides certified low FODMAP meals for those with irritable bowel syndrome or small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO), as well as Mediterranean, low-sodium, and gluten-free (celiac disease) diet meals. Censinet, a developer of healthcare cybersecurity software, also landed $9 million in a funding round led by MemorialCare Innovation Fund, Rex Health Ventures, and Ballad Ventures plus five others for a total of over $22 million.  Release  CARI Health, a San Diego startup developing a wearable sensor for medication management, gained $2.3 million in seed funding from the San Diego Angel Conference plus four other funds. Release

The pace of layoffs may have slowed, but the numbers have not.

Alphabet’s Verily health tech development unit is discharging 15% of current staff, estimated at 240 people.  This is part of a reorganization designed to move to financial independence from Alphabet/Google. It’s categorized among Google units as ‘Other Bets’ which is appropriate given that so far, their bets haven’t hit any jackpots. An example we covered back in 2015-16 was a glucose monitoring contact lens developed with Alcon, an on-the-face of it Preposterous Idea that died about that time. Current discontinued areas include remote patient monitoring for heart failure and micro needles for drug delivery. Employees were told to leave the office for the remainder of the week; further information including separation would be sent to them via email. Since 2017, it has raised over $2 billion. You wonder where it went. CNBC

Cue Health, a home diagnostics company, is cutting 388 employees, about 26% of its workforce, effective March. This is in addition to an 170-person manufacturing worker layoff during the summer. Cue bet heavily on growth of its at-home molecular Covid testing packs sold direct on a membership plan [TTA 12 Nov 2021], plus to pharmacies and to businesses. It expanded from about 100 workers in 2020 to more than 1,500. That growth has cratered along with the entire testing market for a pandemic that is no longer there. According to Mobihealthnews, they have submitted to the FDA for new test such as an EUA for a combination flu and COVID-19 diagnostic as well as de novo clearances for its flu and COVID-19 standalone tests. 

 

CVS works their plan in Oak Street Health buy talks, Carbon Health $100M investment + clinic pilot; VillageMD-Summit finalizes (updated)

January 11, 2023 | by

CVS, Walgreens, Amazon, Walmart all chasing the same type of companies to expand their service continuum. During their Q2 2022 earnings call, CVS Health announced that they were determined to enhance their services in three categories: primary care, provider enablement, and home health. And CVS’ CEO Karen Lynch was pretty blunt about it: “We can’t be in the primary care without M&A” (sic). So CVS’ latest moves should come as no surprise.

Oak Street Health: CVS is in talks with this value-based care primary care provider for primarily older adults in Medicare and Medicare Advantage plans. With 100 offices nationally, it’s not too small, not too large to combine with other operations. As a public company traded on the NYSE but puttering along in the $13-$22 per share range since the fall from a high of $30 in August, the news of CVS’ interest has boosted them above $28 and a market cap of just under $7 billion. Although Oak Street has previously maintained that they have no interest in a sale, it has never been profitable and is on track to lose $200 million this year. That is not a good look for CVS but they are working a strategy. Previously, CVS walked away from primary care group Cano Health [TTA 21 Oct 22]. Bloomberg News (paywalled) reported that CVS could pay $10 billion which would be over $40 a share. Healthcare Dive, Reuters

Carbon Health: CVS leads their Series D with a $100 million investment plus piloting Carbon Health operations in primary and urgent care clinics in their retail stores. However, the deal came at a price. Last week, prior to the investment announcement, Carbon announced that it would wind down lines of business in public health, remote patient monitoring, hardware, and chronic care programs, cutting 200 jobs in addition to a June cut of 250, at the time about 8% of their workforce. Carbon will now concentrate on their clinic core business. 100 are presently located across Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Kansas, Florida, Massachusetts, and California (San Francisco, Bay Area, and San Jose).

In the last two years, Carbon raised $350 million and grew by acquiring four clinic chains. It diversified by buying Steady Health (chronic care management in diabetes) and Alertive Health (remote patient management)–both businesses they are departing. Reportedly last month they bought Inofab Health, an Istanbul-based digital health platform for patients with asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, and cystic fibrosis. Crunchbase, FierceHealthcare, Mobihealthnews, SF BizJournal,

CVS is still working its Signify Health acquisition past the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). It went into a Second Request for information in late October under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976 (HSR), which adds 30 days to the review timetable after the Second Request has been complied with. There is some competitive overlap between CVS and Signify in home health management and accountable care organization (ACO) operations, and some divestitures may be necessary. A closing in Q1 as planned seems optimistic. Acquiring Oak Street may complicate matters since their clinics operate as a Direct Contracting Entity (DCE, now ACO REACH). This present administration is not friendly towards healthcare consolidation of any type, especially with entities participating in Federal programs. (See UHG’s acquisition of Change Healthcare, with court approval being appealed by DOJ.) Reaching (so to speak) deep into CMS programs could be a red flag.

Walgreens’ VillageMD finalized their Summit Health acquisition for $8.9 billion yesterday (9 Jan) (updated). Now with 680 provider locations in 26 markets and 20,000 employees, the group adds to VillageMD’s primary care practices specialty practices in neurology, chiropractic, cardiology, orthopedics, and dermatology plus 150 City MD urgent care locations. 200 VillageMD locations are already adjacent to Walgreens locations. Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) and Evernorth, the health services business of Cigna, were the two investors. WBA raised full-year sales guidance from $133.5 billion to $137.5 billion. The current chair and former chief executive officer of Summit Health, Jeffrey Le Benger, MD, will be the interim president until VillageMD finds a permanent president reporting to VillageMD CEO Tim Barry. Release, RevCycleIntelligence, Forbes  At this point, Walgreens hasn’t moved forward with the rumored acquisition of ACO management services organization Evolent Health [TTA 1 Oct 22], which would be far more complex. 

Amazon is still awaiting Federal approval for One Medical as well as in multiple states (Oregon only the first; expect scrutiny). It is also closing Amazon Care and opening asynchronous non-face-to-face telehealth service Amazon Clinic.  Walmart continues on an internal strategy of opening Walmart Health clinics in underserved areas. Earlier in 2022, they announced the opening of more health ‘superstores’ in Florida, having established 20 in Arkansas, Illinois, and Georgia starting in 2019. Walmart’s approach to retailing health services and products, since getting serious about it in 2018, has wavered with multiple changes of strategy and executive departures [TTA 22 Nov 22]

VillageMD considering $5-$10B merger with Summit Health provider group: reports

November 1, 2022 | by

Two large provider groups, VillageMD and Summit Health, reportedly are considering a merger. VillageMD, which now is majority owned (62%) by Walgreens Boots Alliance, has 342 total primary care clinics in 22 southern and northeastern markets covering 15 states, with 152 co-located with Walgreens eventually increasing to 200. Summit Health has 370 locations in five states, including specialty practices and CityMD urgent care locations. Summit Health is majority owned by Walburg Pincus.

This reinforces a trend of cross-healthcare sector buys, consolidations, and control. VillageMD’s move from a co-location deal with Walgreens to majority ownership (but controlled by an independent board) was one step starting during the pandemic in July 2020 [TTA article series here].

  • Amazon agreed to acquire OneMedical (1Life) for $3.9 billion at the end of July, and abandon Amazon Care, though now running into FTC/DOJ review headwinds with a second request for information [TTA 15 Sep].
  • CVS Health has made no secret of its desire to acquire primary care, provider enablement, and home health companies (Signify Health, also under DOJ scrutiny), but apparently has abandoned or put on hold a deal with Cano Health [TTA 21 Oct].
  • Walmart continues to go direct by opening full-service clinics, announcing the expansion of 16 based in the Tampa, Jacksonville, and Orlando areas in 2023 (Healthcare Dive, Healthcare Finance News).

Valued at $12.9 billion and with Walgreens’ backing, VillageMD has the ‘go big or go home’ resources to execute Walgreens’ version of this strategy.

Why this very well may happen. The two do not overlap (except in NJ) on markets. VillageMD is primarily owned and affiliated primary care practices; Summit Health specialty practices (neurology, chiropractic, cardiology, orthopedics, dermatology) and CityMD urgent care. VillageMD has successfully mastered value-based care models in Medicare and entered advanced Medicare ACO models early and vigorously (Editor’s information); Summit Health primarily is fee-for-service with some participation in value-based programs. More to come. Bloomberg, Becker’s, and a very big hat tip to research from Jailendra Singh of Truist Securities  (paper here)

Breaking: CVS’ Signify Health buy under DOJ scrutiny in ‘second request’

October 21, 2022 | by

Not unexpectedly, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) is taking a hard look at the Signify Health acquisition by CVS Health. The two companies were notified Wednesday on DOJ’s Second Request for information. This was disclosed on an SEC Form 8-K. The DOJ now has 30 additional days to investigate antitrust aspects of the merger, once that additional information is received. 

The timetable goes like this:

  • 19 Sept: CVS filed its premerger notification and report with the DOJ and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976 (HSR). This initiates a 30-day waiting period.
  • 19 Oct: At deadline, the request for additional information initiated by the DOJ was received by both CVS and Signify (Second Request)
  • The Second Request extends the waiting period under the HSR Act by 30 days after both CVS and Signify have substantially complied with the Second Request. The DOJ can terminate the waiting period earlier, or move it to an agreed-upon later date. 

CVS continues to affirm closing the deal by first half 2023 as planned, which is a fairly wide window.

The current government’s DOJ and FTC have made no secret of their policy-driven yen for using antitrust in the name of lowering healthcare costs (even favored pharma). The crashing failure of DOJ’s antitrust motions against UnitedHealthGroup and Change Healthcare [TTA 20 Sept] must have smarted. What this usually initiates is the search for a quick and easy win to put said embarrassment behind them. CVS Health is certainly a high-profile target, though Signify even at $8 billion, like Change, is not except in the industry. 

Signify’s competitive overlap with CVS/Aetna isn’t as large or obvious as UHG’s Optum with Change, but there is some: home health management and (in this Editor’s view), ACO management services with Signify’s Caravan, which participates in multiple Federal shared savings models where Aetna also is. One wonders if some divestment will be demanded by DOJ. Even before the auction, Signify started the complicated and long exit from the failing Bundled Payments for Care Improvement (BPCI) programs inherited from the Remedy Partners buy.

Could the DOJ action have played a role in CVS’ sudden cold feet in acquiring Medicare/Medicaid primary care provider Cano Health? [TTA 20 Oct] The timing is certainly close. 

DOJ is not working alone. The FTC also has a yen for Amazon in their 2 September second request for information on their acquisition of OneMedical, which also added 30 days to the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) clock after compliance. Amazon is already going through this with their iRobot acquisition [TTA 15 Sept]. Reuters, FierceHealthcare, Home Health Care News

News roundup: CVS abandons (?) Cano Health buy; Signify adds home RPM; BioIntelliSense RPM acquires AlertWatch; GE Healthcare, AMC Health partner; Viome raises $67M, other fundings

October 21, 2022 | by | 1 Comment

CVS Health apparently backs away from a strategic primary care buy. Earlier this week, both Barron’s and DealReporter (via FactSet) reported that CVS Health is no longer pursuing an acquisition of Cano Health, a primary care provider group in Florida, Texas, Nevada, California, Illinois, New Mexico, and Puerto Rico that concentrates on senior health, Medicare Advantage patients, and value-based care. Cano has 4,000 employees and 280,000 members. Reasons why were not disclosed by either CVS or Cano. Cano shares listed on the NYSE fell on the news from Monday’s open of $8.22 to $4.50 today (20 Oct). An alternative buyer may be Humana, which has a right of first refusal on a sale dating back to 2019, but Humana has been quiet on the acquisition front of late.

Walking away seems contrary to CVS’ stated strategy of pursuing deals in primary care, provider enablement, and home health, but CVS can afford to be choosy. There’s speculation that CVS has a different provider/VBC enablement target in mind.  Jailendra Singh of Truist Securities identified ACO management services organization Privia Health as a potential buy that would fit well with CVS’ pending buy of Signify Health, which includes competitor Caravan Health (more on this here). But who knows if this ‘walk away’ is final? Healthcare Finance, FierceHealthcare

CVS’ pending deal, Signify Health, announced the addition of spirometry testing to evaluate patients for COPD. This will be added to their existing suite of in-home diagnostic testing and tracking, In-Home Health Evaluation, targeted to Medicaid and Medicare Advantage members. Mobihealthnews

If there’s a Cinderella this inflationary, recessionary year, it’s remote patient monitoring (RPM). BioIntelliSense has been in RPM since 2020 with on-body/stick-on sensors such as the BioButton and the BioSense 30-day monitor. Their latest addition through acquisition is the AlertWatch clinical intelligence and triage system. AlertWatch will join BioIntelliSense’s product group within Medtronic’s HealthCast portfolio in US hospital patient monitoring as part of their existing partnership. In the past ten years, AlertWatch achieved four FDA 510(k) clearances for its specialized product offerings for the operating room, intensive care unit, and labor and delivery unit.  BioIntelliSense release

Veteran RPM company AMC Health will be partnering with GE Healthcare (GEHC) for post-discharge in-home care monitoring. This will extend GEHC’s hospital-based monitoring into post-acute patient needs and anticipate future care needs, potentially reducing unnecessary readmissions. It’s also planned that eventually both hospital and home data will be integrated into GE’s Edison Health database. GEHC also announced additional details about its spinoff, due to happen in early 2023. [Also TTA 12 Nov 21 and 20 July] Mobihealthnews

Healthcare/health tech raises haven’t entirely disappeared. Viome, which uses AI to test the oral and gut microbiome to prevent, diagnose, and treat chronic diseases and cancer, just raised a $67 million Series C led by Bold Capital Group with participation from Khosla Ventures, West River Group, Glico, Ocgrow Ventures, and Physician Partners, for a total raise since 2017 of over $169 million (Crunchbase). Viome recently launched the CancerDetect test for oral and throat cancers under the FDA Breakthrough Device Designation. Last year, they expanded their partnership with GlaxoSmithKline to research and potentially develop interventions for some cancers and autoimmune diseases. Viome release  

Mobihealthnews rounds up several other financings from genomic tester Variantyx’s $20 million in debt financing to mental health app Mindful Care’s modest $7 million Series B and dataset research collaboration platform Rhino Health‘s $6.7 million seed round extension for an $11 million total.

News roundup: CVS sells bswift; Babylon puts Meritage IPA up for sale, financially realigning to prevent delisting; Redesign Health sheds 20%, Noom 10%

October 13, 2022 | by

Companies shedding ancillary businesses, and more than a few of their people that make them go. 

CVS Health is selling bswift to Francisco Partners. Bswift, a benefits technology and HR services company, was acquired by Aetna in 2014 for $400 million. It became part of CVS Health in 2018 after CVS acquired Aetna. Based on the website, it was operated independently. Francisco Partners, an investment group specializing in tech, recently acquired IBM Watson (now Merative) [TTA 7 July] and added it to 400-odd portfolio companies. Acquisition cost and management transitions were not disclosed, but expected to close by Q4 this year. The company will continue to partner with CVS Health and Aetna. Francisco Partners/bswift release, Mobihealthnews, FierceHealthcare, HealthcareFinanceNews

Babylon Health exiting the provider business, transitioning to US financial reporting requirements, and reversing stock to boost price. Babylon has put on the block Meritage Medical Network, an independent physician association (IPA) based in Northern and Central California with 1,800 providers in six counties serving 90,000 patients. The sale was announced 12 October and is expected to complete in early 2023. Babylon’s rationale is “to focus on its core business model through further investment in its digital-first contracts”. It was a short-lived foray, as Meritage was bought only last year along with First Choice Medical Group [TTA 7 Oct 21], which is not mentioned, and completed prior to their SPAC.

Babylon is also financially realigning.

  • On 12 October they also announced conversion to US financial reporting and GAAP accounting from reporting as a foreign private issuer. This will be effective in January 2023.
  • In September, shareholders approved a reverse share split to take place in Q4 to consolidate shares within the approved range of 15:1 to 25:1. All shares will be converted to Class A ordinary shares from a previous A/B structure.

These address a major problem that threatened Babylon’s listing on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). In September, Babylon received notice that it violated NYSE rules in not maintaining an average closing share price of at least $1 over 30 consecutive days. Today’s close (12 October) was $0.42. A reverse split will boost the stock price and prevent Babylon from being delisted. Babylon release, Mobihealthnews

After a brief break, healthcare layoffs continue even at richly valued companies with recent raises.

  • Redesign Health is releasing 20% of its workforce, or 67 people from its NYC-based workforce. This is one month after a $65 million Series C raise in late September from General Catalyst, CVS Health Ventures, and other investors, and a valuation in the $1.7 billion range. According to a company spokesperson, these had nothing to do with the Series C or financially driven, but according to the CEO, part of a “ongoing evolution, and given the need to prioritize in a challenging market”. Departments affected in the ‘restructuring’ are engineering, product, marketing, and recruiting. Redesign is unusual in that it creates startups from its own research, assembles management teams, brands, and funds them. To date, it has created about 40, including a few that have had layoffs of their own (Calibrate). Redesign had planned to create more than 25 new companies by the end of 2022, which apparently will not happen. Fast Company, Mobihealthnews
  • The heavily advertised weight loss app Noom reportedly will be laying off 10% of their staff, or 500 people primarily in coaching. Noom currently has a valuation around $3.7 billion and a cumulative funding of $650 million. Apparently there is also a change in direction from the original (and successful) concept of nutrition, behavioral, and exercise coaching via live chat to scheduled video consults as part of a mind and body platform with a higher degree of personalization, including mental health. The company CFO is also departing for TripAdvisor, according to the Wall Street Journal. TechCrunch

News briefs, catchup edition: UnitedHealth/Change decision October?, CVS wins $8B Signify Health auction, Walgreens majority buy of CareCentrix, FTC requests more info on Amazon-One Medical

September 15, 2022 | by

Your Editor is semi-returned from Almost Two Weeks in Another Town, with a few more days to close out September (and summer into autumn) coming up. A lot of big news broke despite the usually slow Labor Day holiday week.

UnitedHealthcare Group/Change Healthcare Federal lawsuit to be decided in October–reports. The bench trial in the US District Court in Washington DC pitted the Department of Justice and state plaintiffs against UHG’s massive $13 billion acquisition of claims and EDI/data processing giant Change. It concluded 16 August with closing arguments presented 8 September. Dealreporter via Seeking Alpha reported that UHG and Change effectively countered DOJ’s antitrust objections to the acquisition. Change Healthcare had previously sold their claims editing business to TPG Capital to ease antitrust concerns.  Whether that will be enough in the current environment with greater sensitivities around healthcare consolidation remains to be seen. If approved, Change will be folded into OptumInsight. For a deeper dive into the issues, see TTA’s earlier reporting 3 August and 23 March.

CVS Health beat out other contenders with an $8 billion cash bid for Signify Health. It was a busy Labor Day for CVS as Signify’s board met and decided that day on CVS’ cash offer of $30.50 per share in their unusual auction. Amazon, UnitedHealth Group, and little-known Option Care Health were the other bidders. Signify is a strategic boost for CVS in becoming a major player in primary care, provider enablement, and home health as we’ve summarized here from CVS’ Q2 earnings call. Signify’s capabilities in in-home health delivery and provider services were cheaper to buy than to develop. Based on the weight given to it in the CVS release, Signify’s Caravan Health and their Medicare ACOs furnishing value-based care management services to 170 providers was a significant factor in the top price paid.

New Mountain Capital and their investors own 60% of Signify and will be exiting. Signify had in July announced their own exit from the costly and problematic Episodes of Care/BPCI business acquired with Remedy Partners back in 2019. This led to most of the over 480 staff layoffs announced last month. The sale is, as usual, pending regulatory approvals and isn’t expected to close until first half 2023. Kyle Armbrester, Signify’s CEO Kyle Armbrester will continue to lead the company as part of CVS Health. Healthcare Finance, FierceHealthcare

Rival Walgreens Boots Alliance completed their acquisition of a majority share of home care coordination platform CareCentrix. Walgreens’ final payment was $330 million for 55% of the company at an $800 million valuation. As noted previously, Walgreens ‘go big or go home’ strategy in primary care kicked off in 2020 with growing investments in VillageMD, culminating in last year’s $5.2 billion for 63% of the company. The plan is to co-locate Village Medical offices with 600 Walgreens locations by 2025 [TTA 14 Oct 2021]. CVS’ recent actions can be seen as a reaction to Walgreens’ aggressive moves. Healthcare Finance

Amazon now under FTC scrutiny for One Medical acquisition. If shutting down the much-publicized Amazon Care wasn’t quite enough last month, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will be reviewing Amazon’s $3.9 billion buy of One Medical. This was announced in a 1Life Healthcare (parent of One Medical) 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Both 1Life and Amazon received requests for additional information on 2 September, above and beyond the usual required Hart-Scott-Rodino Act (HSR) reports that will be reviewed by the FTC and DOJ. Effectively it extends the HSR waiting period by 30 days after One Medical and Amazon have substantially complied with the additional information ‘second request’.

The FTC isn’t winning popularity contests with Amazon’s legal department, as the agency is reviewing their acquisition of iRobot, maker of robot vacuum cleaners. Mobihealthnews

Babylon Health exits last NHS hospital contract as a ‘distraction’, looks to US market for growth

August 24, 2022 | by

Babylon Health’s rollercoaster ride continues. Today’s news was that their last of three NHS Trust contracts, with Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust (RWT), was ended by Babylon two years into a ten-year contract. This follows the end of two other contracts that drew a fair amount of controversy (see our index here)–the 2020 one-year Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust with an accident and emergency triage app that was discontinued by Babylon, and with University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHB) for a virtual A&E app that was ended in July.

In the UK, Babylon will continue its GP At Hand service that took over a GP office in Fulham, London in 2016. It now currently covers about 155,000 patients. It will also maintain the AI-based chatbot used for triaging patients. GP At Hand is not profitable. GP practices work on a flat fee per patient that averages £155 ($183) per patient per year.

Babylon and RWT contracted in 2021 for a digital-first primary care service that would cover 55,000 patients, with a patient portal that would enable them to view their health records and view appointments. The app would also monitor conditions and like the AI chatbot, help to diagnose illness and actions. Babylon is ending the ten-year contract after two, which would make it 2023.

From the bubbly Digital Enthusiasm of former Health Minister Matt Hancock (left) in 2018 to the storm around @DrMurphy11, a GP who raised performance issues with the Babylon chatbot that escalated to BBC Two’s Newsnight in February 2020, founder and CEO Ali Parsa is now in an unenviable position in two countries. He 1) has semi-exited the UK market, 2) ruthlessly cut costs to the bone because the stock is down 90%, and 3) shifted to the far larger but unforgiving market of the US. The bright spot here is that US patients covered have already topped 6 years of effort in the UK. Parsa has now moved to the US.

Parsa noted in a recent results call [Seeking Alpha-Ed.] with analysts. “Those two or three small NHS contracts that you refer to—and those are not our significant primary-care contracts— those are marginal contracts for us, more in that category of contracts where we could not see a significant contribution to our profit margin,” he said. “And they also had a rather small contribution to our revenue. And therefore we saw them as a distraction and terminated those contracts.”

This Editor has previously noted Babylon’s layoffs/redundancies of at least 100 staff to save $100 million by Q3, which we are now in. Expansion in the US has to take place with static staff to make goal. And as to the US being unforgiving: VCs are snapping their capacious purses shut, Mr. Market’s gone into rehab, and inflation is shrinking healthcare budgets from providers to payers to self-insured companies. The Big Kahunas with Big Bucks–CVS Health, Allscripts, UnitedHealth Group, Amazon, Walgreens, Walmart–and out-of-left-field players like Option Care Health bidding on Signify Health, are snapping up, as we’ve earlier put it, “healthy health tech companies at the right (discounted) price that fill in their tech gaps”. And making life difficult for single players like Babylon Health. Wired. And a snappy hat tip to HISTalk.

Signify Health bidding war ensues, waged by Amazon, UnitedHealth Group, CVS, Option Care Health

August 24, 2022 | by

What a difference less than two weeks makes. We noted on 11 August that in-home health and value-based provider services company Signify Health was up for sale in an unusual auction, with CVS Health the first disclosed bidder. Yesterday, three more companies jumped into the mix, UnitedHealth Group (the 9,000 elephant of US health), Amazon (with One Medical still pending), and little-known Option Care Health, a public (Nasdaq: OPCH) home infusion care company.

Reports in the Wall Street Journal (paywalled) indicate Signify’s value in the auction may top $8 billion. Bids are due around Labor Day. The board will be meeting next Monday to discuss the bids to date. Signify’s current value is about $5 billion.

The share price closed today just above $27, a major rise from last week’s close of $21 (Yahoo Finance).

The UHG bid is above $30, with Amazon close by, according to Bloomberg News sources. The CVS bid is not known. A buy by Amazon would put the company in Instant Major Healthcare Player territory. This Editor believes that with UHG and CVS, antitrust may factor in, especially considering Signify’s recent ownership of the ACO MSO Caravan Health.  

Option Care may not be well known, but it has impressive backing from Goldman Sachs and has been profitable. Their interest is Signify’s home health network and access to providers through Caravan. Another backer, Walgreens Boots Alliance, just sold 11 million shares on the secondary market, reducing its holdings from 20.5 percent to approximately 14.4 percent.

There’s no bar, of course, to the board ending the auction at any time and awarding the company. Healthcare Finance, FierceHealthcare

Week-end news roundup: Allscripts on the acquisition hunt, Amwell’s CVS telehealth deal, Cerner’s $1.8M racial discrimination settlement, predicting Parkinson’s progression via smartwatch data

August 12, 2022 | by

Another company on the hunt for strategic buys. Health IT and EHR company Allscripts is seeking to add to its Veradigm analytics, research, and provider/payer platforms with some strategic acquisitions. Announced on its Q2 earnings call by new CEO Rick Poulton is the intent to expand the company from its current provider base into a more diverse one serving payers and life sciences. Allscripts does have some free cash–about $700 million–having recently sold its hospital and large physician practice EHRs to Constellation Software/N. Harris Group, though there were some settlements around their Practice Fusion EHR now incorporated into Veradigm [TTA 2 Apr]. With a free cash flow from continuing operations around $120 million and about 7% growth, they feel the time is here for some accretive, strategic, and proven acquisitions–at the right price. FierceHealthcare

Amwell’s Q2 earnings call also had good news for shareholders, who of late haven’t had much to cheer. CEO Ido Schoenberg, MD announced that Amwell will provide CVS Health’s Virtual Primary Care, formally launched in late May  Amwell will be providing primary, behavioral health, and chronic care management through the platform. CVS will be providing these services to Aetna fully-insured, self-insured plan sponsors, and CVS Caremark clients effective first half 2023. As this Editor wrote earlier this week, CVS Health is making no secret of its intent to expand into delivering primary care and home health. One way Virtual Primary Care will be leveraged is converting in-store health services to virtual, such as non-emergency treatment and nutrition/wellness programs. CVS is even dabbling into blockchain with downloadable non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for virtual services. HealthcareFinance 

Cerner, on the other hand, is paying out $1.8 million to settle a racial discrimination lawsuit brought by the US Department of Labor. As a Federal contractor, Cerner went under review by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs. That office alleged that Cerner systematically discriminated against qualified Black and Asian applicants who applied for positions at five facilities in Missouri and Kansas between 2015 and 2019. Cerner agreed to pay $1,860,000 in back pay and interest to 1,870 applicants in areas such as medical billing, system engineers and technical solution analysts. Certainly Oracle wanted to get this off the plate before the cutover on 1 October. HealthcareFinance, Department of Labor release

Can enough data collected build a predictive model for the progression of  Parkinson’s? Koneksa, a digital biomarker builder, is working with the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research to build a predictive model on how Parkinson’s will progress over time in an individual. The Fox Foundation already has a database to analyze — the Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative, launched in 2010, with health information and biosamples from Parkinson’s patients. Added to this will be data from Verily’s smartwatch:  activity tracking, gait analysis, and sleep cycles, which will be analyzed using Koneksa’s algorithms and additional machine learning. The award by the Fox Foundation was not disclosed, but it is the second for Koneksa after another grant awarded in mid-June to analyze vocal abnormalities relating to early progression of the disease, in conjunction with Northwestern University. FierceHealthcare

Mid-week news roundup (updated 18 Aug): CVS eyeing Signify Health for in-home/VBC; Babylon Health mixed pic of revenue and losses up; Geisinger doubles telemed specialties; connected IoT devices expand cyber-insecurity (more); Owlet layoffs

August 11, 2022 | by

CVS has dropped another sandal as to their quest to add primary care and home health to their portfolio [TTA 5 Aug]. Reports indicates that CVS Health is bidding to acquire Signify Health, which is up for sale. Signify is best known as a major provider of in-home health care in both evaluations and community-based services, with users such as health plans, health systems, community groups, non-profits, and government. In March, they added provider value-based care with Caravan Health, a mid-sized Accountable Care Organization (ACO) management service organization (MSO), for $250 million.  This would give CVS both leverage in in-home care and access to value-based care models in health systems and practices, adding a network of jumbo (100,000 lives+) ACOs to Aetna’s 500 ACOs.

Signify did take a bit of a bath with its acquisition/merger of Remedy Partners in 2019 which marked their entry into the Federal shared savings programs around Episodes of Care. While it created a $600 million company. Remedy’s Episodes of Care in the CMS Bundled Payments for Care Improvement (BPCI) program was always problematic for Signify on multiple levels (Editor’s experience). Signify announced its exit from the successor BPCI-A (Advanced) model last month to concentrate on home care and the Caravan business. The wind-down, which will take some time as these are Federal programs through CMS, will save Signify about $115-120 million in costs, compared to their annual direct and shared costs of $145 million. Restructuring costs such as severance may be only $35 million. After IPO-ing in February 2021 at $24 per share, it has only recently climbed to $23, having recently hit a 52-week low of $10.70. FierceHealthcare, HealthcareFinanceNews

Updated Perhaps in preparation for acquisition, Signify Health is shedding 489 people starting 1 October, including 45 in Connecticut, with the remainder in Texas, South Dakota, and New York. The information comes from required notices to the Connecticut Department of Labor. The majority of employees affected are remote workers. It appears to be related to Signify’s winding up of BPCI and Episodes of Care activity which are likely on calendar year contracts. The legacy company, Remedy Partners, had been headquartered in Connecticut with staff in New York. Moving forward with layoffs now makes the company more attractive for sale, as the separation expenses will not be an acquiring company liability. The 1 October start date is also a tell.  CT Insider, Becker’s

A mixed picture for Babylon Health. Its Q2 results were up substantially in revenue–4.6x year-over-year from $57.5 million to $265.4 million–along with key indicators such as US members up 220% and a 7.5% improvement in medical margins over three quarters. The US has been very very good to Babylon with value-based care membership growing 3.2x year-on-year to a total of approximately 269,000 US VBC members with 40% of its VBC revenue from Medicare contracts. However, losses are up along with growth–$157.1 million compared to $64.9 million loss PY. Babylon at end of July announced worldwide layoffs of at least 100 people of its current 2,500 in their bid to save $100 million in Q3. Babylon release, Mobihealthnews

Geisinger Health was one of the pioneers in telehealth and remote patient monitoring, from ur-days in the early 2010s to today. Much of its patient base in Pennsylvania is rural or semi-rural, living well away from care centers, with a clinician base equally scattered. They went with a single system–Teladoc–integrated into Epic. By the early days of the pandemic, Geisinger was able to expand their telehealth coverage from 20 to more than 70 specialties, 200 providers to more than 2,000 providers, and over two years (2020-2022) completing over 784,000 telehealth visits to homes, local clinics, or local hospitals. Case study in HealthcareITNews

If you’re a health system CIO managing lots of connected devices, you may need to go to a psychiatrist with your feelings of insecurity. That’s the gist of a new report, the Insecurity of Connected Devices in Healthcare 2022. A new-to-this-Editor cybersecurity firm, Cynerio, partnered with researchers at the Ponemon Institute to survey 517 executives at US health systems to find that their Internet of Medical Things (IoMT)/Internet of Things (IoT) vulnerabilities haven’t changed much since this Editor banged the gong about them well before the pandemic:

  • Cyberattacks–frequent: 56% of respondents experienced 1+ cyberattacks in the past 24 months involving IoMT/IoT devices; 58% averaged 9+ cyberattacks. Adverse impacts on patient care were reported by 45% and 53% of those resulted in increased mortality rates. 24% of hospitals noted an impact on their mortality rates.
  • Data breaches are routine: 43% of hospitals had one in the past two years
  • Risks may be high, but the reaction is sluggish: 71% rated security risks as high or very high, but only 21% report a mature stage of proactive security actions. 46% performed accepted procedures such as scanning for devices, but only 33% keep inventory.
  • Ka-ching! Goes the ransomware! When attacked, 47% paid the ransom, and 32% were in the $250-500,000 range.

The full report is available for download here. Those who prefer a webinar must wait till 17 August at 2pm (EDT)–registration here.  Cynerio release, HealthcareITNews

Updated. Having sat in on the webinar, some further information points from the Ponemon survey deepen the ‘gravity of the risk’:

  • IoT is different because a hack or cyberransoming prevents the device from working. It isn’t fixed by backup as data can be.
  • Health systems are still using IoT computer systems running Windows XT/95–and earlier (!)
  • The average total cost of the largest data breaches is $13 million–the most common cost is in the $1-5 million range. 
  • 88% of these data breaches involved at least one IoT/MT device
  • Risks are known, but action is lagging. 72% of health organizations report a high level of urgency in securing devices–yet 67% of organizations do not keep an inventory of IoT/IoMT devices that they scan
  • 79% don’t consider their activities to be ‘mature’
  • Security investment doesn’t reflect the gravity of the risk–only 3.4% of IT budgets focus on IoT/MT device security.

And in sad layoff news, Owlet Baby Care is shedding an unknown number of employees. Here is the notice on LinkedIn. We noted their FDA problems and a fast pivot last in February, but their going public via a SPAC has been rocky at best with shares lingering at $2 from the IPO at $8. Marketing a pricey baby monitor direct to consumer is expensive, even if it meets a need, and this is likely a cash crunch. At least the ‘leader of people & culture’ is giving them a proper sendoff of thanks–and more usefully, providing their contact information for potential job openings with other companies.

[This is in contrast to the gone-viral spectacle of the CEO of something called HyperSocial posting on LinkedIn his angst about laying off staff–along with a selfie of him weeping. Not exactly confidence-making and All About Him. This Editor’s comment is one of 6,000-odd posts which are largely doubtful to negative.]

Week-end wrapup: CVS plans to expand primary care, home health; Cera Care raises £264M; Linus Health’s AI enabled dementia screener, Cognito’s cognitive therapy slows brain atrophy

August 5, 2022 | by

The sandal (it’s summer) drops at CVS Health in primary care–and maybe more. On their Q2 earnings call, CVS discussed that they are determined to enhance their services in three categories: primary care, provider enablement, and home health. The footwear that dropped was from CEO Karen Lynch: “We can’t be in the primary care without M&A” (sic). It was inevitable, given that rival Walgreens has a $5 billion deal with VillageMD for freestanding Village Medical clinics, Amazon with the pending One Medical buy–which it passed on only weeks prior [TTA 7 July], and Walmart picking along the edges with in-store clinics and telehealth. CVS’ criteria: strong management team, strong tech stack, strong scale, strong ability to build a pathway to profitability. (Certainly not an easy set of hurdles) CVS’ urgent care and in-store MinuteClinics have been doing well, with business up 12% to 2.8 million patient visits year to date. HISTalk, FierceHealthcare, Motley Fool transcript of earnings call

London-based Cera Care Ltd. raised £263.6 million ($320 million) in an equally split debt/equity round. Equity funding came from existing investor Kairos HQ, then the Vanderbilt University Endowment, Schroders Capital, Jane Street Capital, Yabeo Capital, Squarepoint Capital, Guinness Asset Management, Oltre Impact, 8090 Partners, and technology investor Robin Klein. Debt was not disclosed. The fresh financing will go towards expanding patient capacity in the UK plus Germany from the current 15,000 to 100,000.  Cera delivers in-home care, nursing, telehealth, and prescription delivery services using a digital platform and AI algorithms that use the data gathered to predict changes in patient status. TechCrunch, UKTechNews

Two developments from separate companies in the vital areas of improving dementia and Alzheimer’s diagnosis–and outcomes:

  • Linus Health has debuted its cognitive assessment and patient questionnaire platform for clinical use by primary care providers. The assessment tests for subtle changes in cognitive function, which in the preclinical phase will often go undetected. The concept is to push forward diagnosis and therapies to slow disease progression. It is based on an iPad and includes their DCTclock, an AI-enhanced version of the traditional paper-based Clock Drawing Test using a digital stylus or pen that can also spot symptoms of early-stage Parkinson’s. The evaluation including the DCTclock takes about 10 minutes. Release, FierceBiotech
  • Cognito Therapeutics is still in the investigational stage with its GammaSense headset which delivers sound and light therapy to cognitively impaired patients. The sensory stimulation evokes gamma oscillations in the brain that reduces neurodegeneration and brain atrophy. Their paper delivered last week at the Alzheimers Association conference tracked subjects who used the headset one hour per day for six months. The therapy reduced white matter shrinkage to about 0.4%, compared to a historical tracking of about 2%. An earlier study also showed slowdowns in the decline of memory and cognitive function. FierceBiotech

News and deal roundup: Best Buy’s $400M for Current, VA’s Cerner restart 2022, CVS-Microsoft product deal, and Athenahealth (finally) sold for $17B

December 3, 2021 | by

Whew! Best Buy revealed on its quarterly earnings call that they paid $400 million for Edinburgh/Boston-based RPM developer Current Health [TTA 13 Oct]. It’s near the end of the call transcript published on the Motley Fool. There will be no impact on their financial performance this year and will have a slightly negative impact on the Q4 non-GAAP operating income. Hat tip to HISTalk. 

Also today in HISTalk is a nifty summary of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Cerner implementation timing and restaffing. There’s a graphic on the 2022-23 (FY 2022-24) rollout plus the new organization. VA has appointed a new Program Executive Director, Terry Adirim, MD, MPH, MBA, moving from Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, and established a new EHR Integration Council. VA release. VA also published a 10 page analysis on what went wrong with the initial tests and lessons learned, such as creating an EHR ‘sandbox’ for clinician training.

CVS Health and Microsoft continue with a new partnership, this time for digital health products. The five-year deal will include development in two areas: personalizing health recommendations that direct consumers to when and where they need a CVS, and operationally to leverage technology and machine learning for automation to reduce waste. Microsoft release, Healthcare Dive, HealthcareFinanceNews

And in the biggest non-surprise of the past few days, Athenahealth’s (or as they prefer, athenahealth) sale closed before the end of the year in a deal valued at $17 billion. The buyers were, as expected [TTA 19 Nov], Bain Capital and Hellman & Friedman, along with Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC and a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. The 24 year-old Athenahealth, one of the EHR pioneers, was acquired by Elliot Investment Management’s PE arm Veritas and Evergreen Coast Capital in 2019 for about $5.7 billion. Its base is down to about 140,000 ambulatory care providers, having exited the small hospital market some time back. In the EHR market dominated by Epic and Cerner, surely Veritas and Evergreen are relieved to be at least getting some cash back. But there’s Misery Sharing, as they are both retaining a minority investment. (A small hint from a marketer–never lower-case the first letter in any part of your name. You make yourself unimportant and it hasn’t been ‘modern’ for a loooong time. It wasn’t lucky for British Airways, either. Perhaps the new majority owners will get this.)  Healthcare Dive, Business Wire