Lucet, a behavioral health company, will acquire Emcara Health, a value-based medical group focused on home care, the companies announced Tuesday.
The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Overland Park, Kansas-based Lucet works with employers and health plans to provide mental health and addiction support. The company’s care services team evaluates members and matches them with care that best fits their needs. It operates in all 50 states.
Emcara Health, formerly called PopHealthCare (a GuideWell Company), also works with health plans and provides primary and supportive care and annual wellness checks in patients’ homes. It can help patients manage chronic conditions, facilitate lab work and support advanced care planning. It has a care team that includes a medical director, advanced practice provider, registered nurses and community health workers.
As a combined company, Lucet and Emcara will be able to integrate mental health support with physical health. This is necessary as many patients with chronic conditions have a co-occurring mental health condition.
“If you look at the Medicare chronic co-morbid population, around 40% of Medicare Advantage members have at least one unaddressed behavioral health condition,” said Shana Hoffman, president and CEO of Lucet, in an interview. “And then if somebody has both a comorbid condition with behavioral health, there’s a 49% increase in medical expenditure. We were really looking at ways to get to those members that drive medical expense and be able to put behavioral health interventions into their hands.”
To start, the combined companies will pilot the new integrated care model in their overlapping markets, and then will eventually scale to support more patients. This includes evaluating behavioral health needs and linking patients to care during both in-home and virtual visits.
“Through this acquisition, [Emcara’s] proven model for in-home care solutions will be leveraged in combination with Lucet’s behavioral health expertise, bringing to market new integrated care models that will have a substantial clinical impact on how members’ complex chronic and behavioral health conditions are successfully managed together in the future,” said Jeff Goddard, executive vice president and CFO of GuideWell, in a statement.
To measure the success of the acquisition, Lucet will track how many Emcara in-home assessment members access behavioral health services, readmission rates, emergency room visits and the total cost of care, Hoffman said. The company also follows how many healthy days patients have at home.
With healthcare costs remaining high, Hoffman said payers will be looking for providers that offer a complete range of services. That’s what Lucet hopes to accomplish with this acquisition of Emcara.
“We think starting with that behavioral health piece, which is what Lucet has been built on for 30 years, and then being able to add these other pieces in just gives us a really great position, particularly as you think about managing those conditions for members across the medical and behavioral spectrum,” she said.
Photo: mikdam, Getty Images
