In an announcement a few minutes ago, healthplan company Humana announced it intends to buy occ clinic firm Concentra for $790 million.
Currently Concentra has about 300 facilities and 240 on-site clinics and revenues of $800 million.
The deal does two things for Humana.
First, it diversifies the health plan’s revenue sources; Concentra handles over 10 percent of all work comp primary care, a very different business form Humana’s group/medicare business.
More importantly, Concentra’s three hundred plus clinics are located near many of Humana’s current – and hopefully future – members. This solves a very big problem for Humana – and every other health plan – the dearth of primary care.
Concentra also has very strong relationships with local employers, relationships that Humana is certain to leverage as it rolls out its new offerings in the near future.
Concentra’s facilities will be able to provide Humana with a significant advantage in many markets – tight control over primary care costs, integrated electronic medical records, access to wellness and health promotion activities and resources (currently a top priority for Concentra).
This is a smart move for both organizations, and will likely get other big health plans thinking harder about creative ways to address primary care access.
Nov
22
About 6 – 7 years ago, Concentra brought onto its board Norm Payson, a successful health insurance entrepreneur from New England. The move was clearly taken to prepare Concentra for a transition of its business model. Payson left, presumably because the market was not ready or Concentra was not ready. Now the process is complete.