Cardinal Health subsidiary naviHealth has acquired RightCare Solutions, a discharge decision support platform to reduce readmissions by flagging patients at risk for readmissions when they’re admitted to the hospital. It is designed to help nurses and discharge planners decide on whether patients need post-acute care. The deal comes as hospitals feel the pressure from ACA regulations to do a better job of serving these patients or face reduced reimbursement.
The terms of the deal were not immediately disclosed.
naviHealth works with health plans, health systems, physicians and post-acute providers on post-acute care management. Highmark, Hospital Corp of America, Kaiser Permanente, and Dignity Health are among its partners. Cardinal Health acquired a majority stake in the business, 71 percent, for $290 million in August this year.
Kathy Bowles, a professor with the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, co-founded RightCare in 2011. Bowles received $5 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health to help develop the program. Eric Heil, also a co-founder, is the CEO. The Philadelphia company also took part in MedCity Converge Startup Showcase in the past.
The company has been pretty conservative with its funding — it raised a total of $10.75 million from Compass, Domain Associates and NewSpring Capital, according to data from Crunchbase.
naviHealth CEO Clay Richards said in a statement that RightCare was a good fit for its business and it had a track record of delivering technology solutions to hospitals.
“As the evolution toward value-based care and new payment models continues to gain momentum, health systems are increasingly recognizing the need to embrace new technologies that can help achieve lower costs and improved patient outcomes. Moreover, the newly proposed CMS conditions of participation focused on quality and timeliness of discharge planning makes the acquisition of RightCare very strategic at this point in time…that translate into real ROI. The combination of our post-acute decision support and clinical analytics with RightCare’s integrated discharge planning capabilities will further accelerate our ability to deliver a unique value proposition to health systems as they look to manage post-acute care in an evolving market. We see this as a perfect fit for our business goals and are extremely excited for what RightCare and its people can bring to naviHealth.”
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A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
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