Elevance Health Teases Big Plans For At-Home Acute Care

Elevance Health Inc. (NYSE: ELV) plans to go big on post-acute care models and value-based care.

Those were two main takeaways from the Indianapolis-based company’s second quarter earnings call Wednesday.

Elevance CEO Gail Boudreaux noted that Carelon Services — the company’s provider services arm — delivered solid organic growth led by the expansion of post-acute care management solutions within the company’s Medicare health plans.

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“New business awards and successful execution in these fast-growing high-cost areas of trends underscore the value Carelon provides to health plans and the expanding earnings power and attractive growth profile of the Carelon Services business,” she said during the call.

Elevance’s myNEXUS – now called Carelon post-acute care solutions – is gaining a lot of visibility through its home solutions, too, according to Peter Haytaian. Haytaian is the executive vice president of Elevance Health and president of Carelon.

Achieving value-based care throughout the Elevance network remains a priority, a priority that can be accelerated through home-based care, company leaders acknowledged.

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“We’re also working with care provider partners to enable acute care in the home, a patient centered care alternative to traditional care in the hospital that improves cost, quality and patient experiences,” Boudreaux said. “For select patients, acute care at home is safe, improves patient satisfaction, and provides high value care, resulting in approximately a 20% reduction in cost, a 25% decrease in readmissions and a 50% reduction in time spent in bed.”

Currently, Elevance has partnerships with a number of major health systems in its markets. The company has also seen major interest from other health systems looking to expand hospital-level care in the home.

“Connectivity with care provider partners is crucial to supporting our value-based care strategy,” Boudreaux said.

With this in mind, Boudreaux also touched on Elevance’s efforts to expand bi-directional data exchanges between the company’s systems and care providers EMRs.

To date, Elevance is connected with over 1,700 hospitals across 24 markets.

“In addition to enabling physicians to practice value-based care more effectively, these arrangements have simplified common business practices, resulting in more than 60% fewer requests for clinical information and more than 80% less provider appeals,” Boudreaux said. “This has not only enhanced operating efficiency for our clinicians and care provider partners, it has also accelerated care approval processes for consumers.”

Overall, in Q2, Elevance saw double-digit growth in revenue, operating income and adjusted earnings per share.

“[This was] driven by the focused execution of our strategy,” Elevance CFO John Gallina said.

Operating revenue for Elevance was $43.4 billion in Q2 of 2023, an increase of $4.9 billion, or 12.7%, year over year.

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