Giving a patient medications in the ER, having them pop positive on a test, and then withholding further medications because…
Aetna To Acquire Medicity for $500 Million
Aetna announced this morning that it will acquire health information exchange vendor Medicity for $500 million. The Salt Lake City, UT company’s technologies serve over 760 hospitals, 125,000 physician users, and 250,000 end users.
“This acquisition will enable Aetna to offer a set of convenient, easy-to-access technology solutions for physicians, hospitals and other health care providers. That, in turn, can help improve the quality and efficiency of patient care,” said Mark T. Bertolini, Aetna CEO and president. “Strategically, we believe this acquisition will enhance Aetna’s capabilities and accelerate our growth in the health information technology and health information exchange space.”
“We are excited about joining Aetna, with the shared vision for improving the health care experience for all stakeholders,” said James K. ‘Kipp’ Lassetter, M.D., Medicity chairman and CEO. “The combination of Medicity’s connected health care platform for providers with the clinical decision support capabilities of Aetna’s ActiveHealth Management subsidiary can help physicians make better decisions in real-time as they collaborate and coordinate care.”
Medicity will operate as a separate Aetna business unit under the company’s current management.
Thanks to the anonymous HIStalk reader who tipped us off early – the same one who provided the earlier and equally accurate rumor that Ingenix would acquire Axolotl. I posted the teaser on Facebook last night after confirming the rumor, which I didn’t report in detail since it involves a publicly traded company.
Payers 2
Providers/Hospitals 0
In a space where trust is of paramount importance, the recent acquisition of Axolotl by Ingenix (United Healthcare) and now the acquisition of Medicity by Aetna may be a difficult pill to swallow.
My hat’s off to Kipp and team.
Not suprising in the least. Medicity had the CareEngine partership with Aetna for a while. Only thing was the price point. Better win an awful lot of the state business vs. Axolotl/United Health to justifiy this acquisition in the short/intermediate because Medicity’s portal is a dog, iNexx application shop is almost entirely a PR ploy at this point, and the agent software from Novo isn’t as slick & easy as they advertise.
It’s good to be Kipp Lassetter today.
This will be an interesting development not only in the provider and hospital community area of mistrust of sharing this level of data with an insurer based provider of software – but just think of the other payers paranoia about having their network providers pass all their data through a competitors HIE solution. And a bigger point, will both payers eventually require passage of data to both HIE products if they belong to both insurer networks? The biggest play I see is the ACO capabilities the payers will be able to offer their network IDNs. So, what other HIE vendor besides ICA will this leave in the independent space serving the community and state level?
Iggy — there are still a few high quality options to choose from…
Tim Elwell, I would appreciate knowing which vendors are on your list of quality options. Thanks.