Anthem Announces That It Will Acquire Aspire Health

In the latest move by Anthem Inc., the company announced earlier this week that it plans to acquire Aspire Health, the nation’s largest non-hospice advanced care provider.

“Aspire Health shares our perspective on the increasingly important role of integrated care and has built a unique model that provides palliative care and support for support services for patients and their families,” said Gail K. Boudreaux, president and CEO of Anthem, in a statement.

Aspire was founded in 2013 by former US Senator William Frist, MD, and Brad Smith, who serves as the CEO. The company uses proprietary predictive clinical technology and claims-based patient algorithms to identify patients that have a serious illness who may benefit from added support. Once patients are identified, Aspire establishes a comprehensive integrated care team to address symptom management, coordinated care, and advanced care planning.

“As part of Anthem, we believe we will be able to further scale our model and positively impact the lives of even more consumers and families, making home-based advanced illness care available to patients who need it,” said Smith in a statement.

CMS has previously estimated that the average rate of national health spending will grow 5.5% per year from 2017 to 2026, reaching nearly $5.7 trillion. According to a study published last year in Health Affairs, end-of-life care is among the most expensive healthcare costs, reaching a mean of $80,000 per capita in the last 12 months of life.

In the past, Anthem has attempt to curtail healthcare costs in controversial ways. Last year, it announced that emergency department (ED) visits would no longer be covered by the insurer in cases where it deemed the visit unnecessary. It amended this policy in February 2018, stating that exceptions would be made for patients sent to an ED by a provider, those from out of state who present to the ED on the weekend, and those who end up receiving certain types of medical care such as surgery, intravenous (IV) fluids, or a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or computed tomography (CT) scan.

The acquisition is expected to be finalized in the third quarter of 2018, and the financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.