Amedisys snaps up hospital-at-home provider Contessa Health in $250M deal

Amedisys made a major move to expand its reach in the home healthcare market by acquiring Contessa Health, one of the biggest hospital-at-home players.

Amedisys, a home health, hospice and personal care company, said the $250 million deal adds higher acuity, home-based care to Amedisys’ current service offering and significantly expands Amedisys’ total addressable market for in-home care services from $44 billion to $73 billion.

Contessa Health, founded in 2015, provides hospital-at-home and skilled nursing facility at-home services and partners with health systems and health plans including Mount Sinai Health System, Marshfield Clinic Health System, Ascension Saint Thomas, CommonSpirit Health and Highmark Health. The company has potential plans to expand to more than a hundred hospitals in 28 more states,

Contessa also developed a proprietary informatics platform, called CareConvergence, to coordinate and deliver home-based care. The company also developed a risk-based model and claims analytics capabilities to bring the essential elements of inpatient hospital and SNF care to patients’ homes to improve patient outcomes and experience while reducing costs and hospital readmissions, the companies said.

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Amedisys chairman and chief executive officer Paul Kusserow called the acquisition "strategic" and a "promised milestone" for Amedisys’ growth and differentiation, as it expands its capabilities to reflect growing market demands and evolving patient preference for higher-acuity in-home settings.

“While Amedisys continues to be a national leader in quality home health and hospice services, we have always worked to innovate and provide even more types of care in the home, as patients increasingly seek to ‘age in place’ in environments that are familiar and safe. Bringing the Contessa team into our family significantly advances this strategy," Kusserow said.

Upon closing of the deal, Nashville, Tenn.-based Contessa will operate as a wholly owned division of Amedisys.

Amedisys partners with 2,900 hospitals and 78,000 physicians nationwide and employers about 21,000 employees in 514 care centers in 39 states and the District of Columbia. The company serves about 418,000 patients and clients a year.

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Contessa founder and CEO Travis Messina and his management team will continue to lead Contessa, which will operate and be reported on as a separate and unique business within Amedisys.

“We launched Contessa with the ambitious vision of creating innovative models that would allow as many patients as possible to receive higher-acuity care in their preferred setting – the home,” said Messina in a statement. “

Amedisys brings to the table a national footprint, a reputation for outstanding clinical quality, and the scale and infrastructure available to accelerate Contessa's trajectory, he said.

Bringing on Contessa Health's business and capabilities positions Amedisys to move into the hospital at home and SNF at home space with the ability to scale across a large geographic footprint, the company said.