CVS Health (NYSE: CVS) held its investor day Tuesday, which included company leaders’ ambitious plan for the future.
That plan includes a synchronization of its health care delivery arm with the rest of the enterprise, and that health care delivery arm, of course, includes home-based health care.
“We said we wanted to be in primary care, we wanted to be in the home, we wanted to have provider enablement capabilities,” CVS Health CEO Karen Lynch said. “We have that basic platform today, and … we really need to continue to grow and execute on that strategy. And also, as you think about this payer platform, it’s multi-payer. It’s not just Aetna, we have the opportunity to accelerate the platform growth through all our multi-payer capabilities.”
CVS Health’s health care services segment – now dubbed CVS Healthspire – includes the recently acquired assets Signify Health and Oak Street Health. While Signify Health got CVS into the home, Oak Street Health got the company into primary care.
Lynch has also teased more acquisitions in home-based care in the past, but didn’t delve much into those opportunities Tuesday.
But she did paint a picture of where CVS Health wanted to go, and that picture suggested heavy investment in CVS Healthspire in the future.
“It’s our time now to drive fundamental restructuring in how health care is delivered – how and by whom,” Lynch said. “It’s necessary. Addressing these challenges means that we successfully need to engage people in their overall health, and in moments that matter. And that can make a critical difference. As a company, we’re building the world of health around the consumer to do just that.”
CVS Health is leveraging Signify Health to address patient needs in their home. They’re also using those at-home visits to connect those patients to Oak Street Health. Lynch acknowledged that it’s “still early in this initiative,” but that of the members that Signify Health has connected to Oak Street Health, more than half have scheduled appointments.
To that end, CVS is planning on significantly expanding Oak Street Health’s footprint in 2024.
“Our biggest opportunity and why we are so excited about the future is our ability to engage consumers at multiple touchpoints across our entire portfolio of businesses,” Lynch said. “This is a key differentiator for CVS Health.”
Lynch said that the expectation is to accelerate growth through CVS Healthspire in the near-term future.
“We actually have an opportunity to leapfrog our peers, not only because of the strength of our diversified portfolio, but importantly, because of the strength of the CVS assets – both Oak Street Health and Signify, and all the touch points in the pharmacies and PBM,” Aetna President Brian Kane added. “This gives us unmatched opportunity to fundamentally change the way payers and providers interact with one another, and the experiences that they provide for their members and patients.”