Dive Brief:
- Walgreens Boots Alliance has completed its majority stake acquisition in at-home care technology platform CareCentrix, the retail pharmacy giant announced Wednesday.
- The $330 million investment gives Walgreens a 55% ownership of CareCentrix. Walgreens has the option to acquire the remaining equity in the future.
- The investment, first announced in October, expands Walgreen’s reach in the health sector, especially in the areas of primary care, specialty pharmacy, post-acute and home care, the company said in a Wednesday release.
Dive Insight:
More consumers are looking for cheaper sites of care as hospital expenditures skyrocket, causing care delivery to increasingly shift outside of the inpatient setting. A surging senior population is also expected to escalate demand for care at home and in the community, instead of in the hospital.
As a result, healthcare companies are scrambling to snap up a share of the growing at-home care market. A rising number of health systems are offering hospital-at-home programs. Payers are also throwing their hats in the ring, with some, like Humana, offering their own at-home models, enticed by an opportunity to cut costs without sacrificing care.
Walgreens announced it planned to acquire CareCentrix in October as the Illinois-based retailer looks to bolster its new Walgreens Health segment. The company said it hopes CareCentrix and its data analytics capabilities will help Walgreens address the needs of patients with complex and chronic conditions transitioning out of the hospital.
In addition to home-based care, CareCentrix connects patients to providers and sites of post-discharge care using a predictive analytics platform. The company currently manages 19 million members through roughly 7,400 provider locations, and delivered $1.5 billion in sales in Walgreens’ 2021 fiscal year, according to the release.
Walgreens said it plans to integrate CareCentrix’s data analytics and home care expertise with its own portfolio of health solutions, which include specialty pharmacy company Shields Health Solutions and primary care network VillageMD.
The integration should allow Walgreens to support medication reconciliation for CareCentrix patients, and provide primary care options if needed, including VillageMD physicians, for example. CareCentrix will also help Walgreens Health manage population-level risk for benefits management and post-acute spend, Walgreens said.
