Navigate the healthcare industry
Healthcare Brew covers pharmaceutical developments, health startups, the latest tech, and how it impacts hospitals and providers to keep administrators and providers informed.
CVS expects to finalize its $8 billion acquisition of Signify Health this week, the retail pharmacy giant said on Monday.
CVS beat out both Amazon and UnitedHealth Group to buy Signify, a value-based provider network. The company announced the deal last September, and executives said they expect it to close “on or around March 29.”
In a phone call following the deal announcement, Shawn Guertin, EVP and CFO at CVS, said the company anticipates that acquiring Signify will “generate attractive returns” for CVS.
The acquisition strengthens CVS’s goal of becoming a value-based healthcare company and could give it a leg up over rival Walgreens. Both companies have doubled down on value-based care in the last couple of years, making several multibillion dollar deals, such as Walgreens’s $5.2 billion VillageMD acquisition in 2021 and CVS’s $10.6 billion takeover of Oak Street Health.
“In our opinion, this brings CVS closer to their goal of managing more lives through value-based care relationships,” JP Morgan analysts Lisa Gill and Calvin Sternick wrote in a note. “With a network of virtual and in-person options, CVS has the opportunity to truly bend the cost curve in a value-based care environment, thus creating a win/win/win environment for the patient/payer/CVS.”
Creating a value-based care model gives pharmacy players like CVS an opportunity to expand in a mature industry, Michael Abrams, a managing partner at healthcare consulting firm Numerof and Associates, told Healthcare Brew.
CVS will now have access to Signify’s network of 10,000 providers located in all 50 states. Signify sends providers to patients’ homes to perform evaluations; create records of the patient’s clinical, social, and behavioral needs; and figure out a value-based care plan.
“Signify Health will play a critical role in advancing our healthcare services strategy, and gives us a platform to accelerate our growth in value-based care,” Karen Lynch, president and CEO of CVS, said in September 2022.