Last year, CareLinx entered a new phase of its business with its entrance into the clinical side of home-based care. As a result, CareLinx saw major growth, which, in turn, made the company more attractive to prospective buyers. One of those interested parties has officially made a play for CareLinx.
On Wednesday, Sharecare (Nasdaq: SHCR) announced that it has closed its acquisition of CareLinx. The company acquired CareLinx from Global Fortune 50 company Generali for a purchase price of $65 million.
“When I was looking at a home, going from Generali to identifying a U.S.-based home that can rapidly accelerate our growth, … there was no better home than Sharecare,” Sherwin Sheik, founder and CEO of CareLinx, told Home Health Care News.
Burlingame, California-based CareLinx Inc. originally began as a tech-enabled home-based care company that coordinated non-medical personal care services. It has since evolved to include clinical care services under its Nurse OnDemand business line.
CareLinx, which has a network of more than 450,000 care providers across the U.S., partners with both health plans and providers. Currently, the company serves over 1 million Medicare Advantage members nationwide.
Meanwhile, Sharecare is an Atlanta, Georgia-based digital health company. The company’s virtual platform helps people manage all their health needs in one place, streaming the ability to access health records and other information.
The company also allows its users to stay informed about their personal health through its comprehensive suite of services.
“You’re not having a dozen apps to manage your money,” Jeff Arnold, founder, chairman and CEO of Sharecare, told HHCN. “Why would you have a dozen apps to manage your health? Sharecare is the platform company that is bringing it all together in one place on behalf of our users, typically sponsored through their health plan or employer.”
The acquisition has roots in a longstanding relationship between CareLinx and Sharecare.
“This deal did not come together overnight,” Sheik said. “This has been a relationship that’s evolved over four years, from our teams jointly working together on other opportunities … and seeing how well the teams worked. As we continued that relationship, I would always check in with Jeff, and he was always receptive to getting updates on what’s going on at CareLinx.”
For Sharecare, CareLinx was an appealing acquisition target because of its distinct business model and platform.
“I always thought of it as almost, ‘Match.com meets Uber’ for caregiving,” Arnold said. “[Sheik] had built this great platform that could match families up with caregivers, could figure out the logistics, collect the data, deliver the care plan, pay the caregiver faster, and do it on everybody’s terms.”
CareLinx’s expansion into clinical care with Nurse OnDemand amid the COVID-19 emergency only further strengthened the Sharecare leadership team’s confidence in the company.
Since launching Nurse OnDemand, CareLinx has landed more than 460 enterprise clients.
“CareLinx has shown impressive organic growth to date, and we believe Sharecare is well-positioned to continue that trajectory,” Justin Ferrero, president and CFO of Sharecare, said in a statement.
Sharecare noted that the acquisition will expand the company’s total available market by over $7 billion for home care — and potentially over $100 billion if they further expand into home health.
On its end, the deal positioned CareLinx to further build on its momentum and scale.
“I’m a big believer in their vision of the entire platform,” Sheik said. “I saw the network of customers that they have and how CareLinx can really fit in all three channels that they have — from enterprise, to providers, to consumers.”
Ferrero noted that several of Sharecare’s health plan and provider customers were actively seeking the solution that CareLinx’s business model offers.
In total, Sharecare has 6,000 health systems and large physician-clinic clients, as well as more than 108 million people in its first-party database, which is direct-to-consumer.
Overall, Sheik believes that CareLinx has seen success because the company’s business model is focused on solving the toughest problem first.
“That is, how do you reliably send non-medical providers to really address the functional needs of patients at home,” he said.
Looking ahead, Medicare Advantage is top of mind for CareLinx.
“We’ve seen a significant expansion of interest from existing Medicare Advantage plans,” Sheik said. “We’re in conversations with several of the largest Medicare Advantage plans for 2022.”
Now that the transaction is officially closed, the two organizations are looking forward to continuing to build on a relationship that has been years in the making.
“We’re already working on our first 180 days,” Arnold said. “It doesn’t feel like a new merger, because we’re so in sync. I think we’re going to have some really quick wins together.”
