CMA clears £1.2B EMIS acquisition by UnitedHealth Group’s Optum (UK)

October 2, 2023 | by

It took a year, but it’s approved. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the UK agency tasked with approving acquisitions, approved the acquisition of UK healthcare tech systems developer EMIS by UnitedHealth Group (UHG)’s Optum. The actual acquisition will be made by Bordeaux UK Holdings II, a UK Optum unit. 

The £1.2 billion bid for the private company was made in June 2022. In March 2023, CMA moved its review to an independent group for a Phase 2 review due to EMIS’ engagement with the NHS. The Phase 2 review determined that the acquisition by Optum did not raise competitive concerns. Optum is currently a supplier to NHS and GP practices in pharmacy prescription, advisory services, and data analytics. The acquisition of the EMIS system was found to not effectively restrict other entities’ access to data or population health services, and that any restriction could be regulated by the NHS to prevent its use by Optum as a business strategy. Further discussion is presented in the CMA release.

EMIS is the leading EHR system used by NHS GPs throughout the UK. EMIS also has systems for business intelligence, pharmacy, EDs and urgent care, and to identify patients for clinical trials. 

This final approval indicates that the acquisition will close before the end of this year.  Becker’s Payer, CMA release, Medical Buyer (India), Reuters

Wednesday news roundup: March telehealth claims down to 4.6%, state telehealth waivers expiring, UnitedHealth’s Optum bids for EMIS, Talkspace reportedly rejected Amwell, Mindpath bids

June 22, 2022 | by

Telehealth usage continuing its downward trend. At 4.6%, telehealth medical claims in March were off over 6% (0.3 points) versus February’s 4.9%. Again, 65% of claims were for mental health conditions, and social workers were the leading providers of telehealth at 32% for primarily one hour of psychotherapy at 26%. FAIR Health monthly US tracker.

One possible contributing factor is states pulling back on the broad telehealth provider location and other waivers (such as platforms) that were enacted during the Covid emergency. These waivers primarily permitted out-of-state providers. The expiration of waivers thus return telehealth delivery to in-state licensed providers unless covered by other regulations, for instance Medicaid. Last year, 26 states waived in-state licensure requirements; this year, only 12 states have these waivers. California and New Jersey are due to expire soon.  NBC News with a hat tip to HISTalk.

Optum bids to buy UK health software provider EMIS. The bid of £1.24 billion ($1.5 billion) was announced last Friday. A UK affiliate of Optum, Bordeaux UK Holdings II Limited, is the actual entity for the acquisition, recommended by the EMIS board. The offer is in cash and represents a 49% premium to the current share price. EMIS is a leading provider of software and systems to the NHS, serving primary care, community care and pharmacy, acute care, and the Patient.info website. When completed, EMIS would be UnitedHealth’s largest acquisition in the UK and Europe. FierceHealthcare 

Troubled telementalhealth provider Talkspace reportedly rejected a bid from Amwell pretty much out of hand, leading to speculation that it’s up for sale but being picky-picky-picky.  According to the report in Behavioral Health Business, from Seeking Alpha, their talks did not even reach number discussions. This is after Talkspace rejected another bid in May from another telementalhealth provider Mindpath, backed by Centerbridge Partners and Leonard Green & Partners. Sources were split on whether $500 million was offered or not (Axios).

Talkspace is one of the poster children for Cracking SPACs. It hit the market in January 2021 at a valuation of $1.4 billion, opening above $8, hitting a peak of about $11 per share. Share price declined to as low as $1.06 before rising on this acquisition talk to $1.58. Current valuation is $58 million, but it is sitting on a reported $184 million in cash. Reportedly their CEO search is going nowhere. Much like Teladoc, one year after their SPAC, investor lawsuits were filed against the company for misleading investors. Look for Talkspace to be sold over the summer.

A random selection of what’s crossed my screen recently

October 25, 2017 | by

One of the signs of autumn for this editor is the first email from Flusurvey. This is a brilliantly simple system that sends you an email every week asking if you have flu-like symptoms, then produces a map of the UK that gives advance warnings of epidemics. It costs nothing to join and is a great contribution to public health so why not sign up?. (They also have some exciting developments that may surface soon such as a small device that you blow into the connects to a smartphone and can tell almost immediately if you have flu’.)

Increasingly of concern to this editor, due to his deep involvement in digital health regulation, is who is working out how to regulate self-learning algorithms. It is therefore good to see the issue breaking cover in the general press with this article. For what it’s worth this editor’s view is that as technology begins to behave more like humans, albeit in a much faster, and narrow, way by learning as it goes along, perhaps an appropriately adapted use of the way human clinicians are examined, supervised and regulated, might be most appropriate. Sitting next to an AHSN CIO interested in the topic at a Kings Fund event last week, I was pleased to hear him offer precisely the same suggestion, so perhaps there is a little mileage in the idea. 

DHACA (disclosure: run by this editor) has just renewed its website after a long delay, and will be updating content over the next few weeks. First off is the events page advertising:

Our Digital health safety conference on 7th November at Cocoon Networks, London, is being run jointly with DigitalHealth.London – the MHRA has now confirmed they will present so we have almost all the relevant organisations and experts in the UK speaking at this event which should be essential attendance for all involved with the development and use of digital health & care. Attendance has increased substantially in the past few days so do book soon to be sure of securing a place. Much more, including an almost-finalised agenda, is here.

DHACA Day XV – we are back to our usual location at the Digital Catapult Centre on 10th January where are building an agenda of some extremely interesting speakers. To check out the agenda development and to book in advance, go here.

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2015: a few predictions (UK-biased)

January 3, 2015 | by

As intimated in our review of last year’s predictions, we feel little need to change course significantly, however some are now done & dusted, whereas others have a way to go. The latter include a concern about doctors, especially those in hospitals, continuing to use high-risk uncertified apps where the chance of injury or death of a patient is high if there is an error in them. Uncertified dosage calculators are considered particularly concerning.

Of necessity this is an area where clinicians are unwilling to be quoted, and meetings impose Chatham House rules. Suffice to say therefore that the point has now been well taken, and the MHRA are well aware of general concerns. Our first prediction therefore is that:

One or more Royal College/College will advise or instruct its members only to use CE-certified or otherwise risk-assessed medical apps.

The challenge here of course is that a restriction to CE-certified apps-only would be a disaster as many, if not most, apps used by clinicians do not meet the definition of a Medical Device and so could not justifiably be CE-certified. And apps are now a major source of efficiencies in hospitals – (more…)