Signify Health buys social determinants technology company TAV Health

Dallas-based Signify Health, a technology company that supports in-home care and provides care management services, acquired TAV Health to build its capabilities to address social determinants of health.

TAV Health, based in San Antonio, Texas, builds networks of community, healthcare providers and payers that use a single shared cloud-based platform to collaborate and coordinate services. The company said it has served nearly 3 million social determinants members in the past nine years.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. CNBC reported the deal was in the high double-digit millions.

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Signify Health launched in December 2017 as the result of a merger between CenseoHealth and Advance Health. The company, led by former Athenahealth executive Kyle Armbrester, manages a nationwide network of 4,000 doctors and nurse practitioners delivering healthcare services in the home to over a million unique Medicare Advantage members each year.Jamo Rubin, M.D., a former cardiac transplant anesthesiologist, launched TAV Health in 2011 with the goal of creating longitudinal social records that can be merged with clinical records to track the services that people need and the clients' outcomes after receiving these services.

Signify executives said the acquisition of TAV Health adds a curated network of community-based organizations and the technology capabilities to directly manage social determinants needs on behalf of its clients, creating a closed loop between identification of social needs, enrollment into programs, and coordination of services to better manage and improve health outcomes for members.

“A surprisingly high percentage of health outcomes are driven by social, environmental, and behavioral factors,” Armbrester said. "While we have rich data on these factors from what our clinicians capture while caring for members in the home, healthcare has historically had a last-mile problem on connecting the need with the fulfillment.”

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“TAV Health provides the tools and network to put food in the fridge and keep our most vulnerable members safe and secure in their own homes,” Armbrester said.

As healthcare continues shifting paradigms toward value-based and at-risk care delivery, social factors are an increasingly critical part of the equation, according to Matt Holt, managing director at Mountain Capital, which invested in Signify Health. The addition of TAV Health’s social needs technology will help to build a “longitudinal view and approach to care for high-risk members who need it most,” he said.