Inside the Acquisition: Signify Health’s CEO Talks About Becoming Part of the CVS Health Family

What’s it like when CVS Health acquires your business for $8 billion dollars? Kyle Armbrester, CEO of Signify Health, says it “turbo charges your roadmap.” He’s here to share the inside story on the home health value-based care business that CVS Health just bought and how its go-to-market plan moving forward may not be exaaaactly what everyone would expect from CVS as one of healthcare’s most vertically-integrated organizations....

Spoiler alert. “We're not being integrated into Aetna,” explains Kyle. “We're a standalone, independent entity inside CVS that's going to continue to enjoy our multi-payer and multi-provider client base.” The phrase “payor agnostic” sums it up nicely, and Kyle explains exactly what this means, how the strategy is intended to play out in the market with Signify’s other provider and payor clients (including large national carriers like Humana), and why this approach is critical to Signify’s continued success – and CVS Health’s own efforts to lead – in the burgeoning home care market.

Kyle says CVS Health’s CEO Karen Lynch has deemed it "a home care Renaissance" and he explains the macro forces he sees driving more healthcare into the home: from patients demanding better healthcare journeys to Medicare, Medicaid, and commercial payors making more assertive moves to remove cost and waste from the system by more frequently adopting total cost of care reimbursement models and re-thinking the home as a place for preventative care and screening. Adds Kyle, “I think CVS doing this deal is an acknowledgement that healthcare is being executed across a continuum. And while the retail segment is a vital part of that continuum, our hospital clients are a vital part of that continuum, the home is also something that's been overlooked for quite some time.”

So, what does this next-gen, screening-focused, home health model that Signify Health has brought into nearly 3 million homes this year look like? And, how does it bridge the gap between payor programs and its network of more than 200 health system partners? We get into all the parts and pieces of Signify’s model and its tech underpinnings, what fires Kyle up most about the potential of adding new medication management services thanks to CVS Pharmacy’s expertise, and, most importantly, gossip away about what will happen to Signify when CVS Health closes on its acquisition of Medicare-focused primary care provider Oak Street Health this summer.

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