The planned combination of SCAN Group and CareOregon is no longer.
In a joint statement, the two companies announced their merger will not continue as scheduled, citing questions about the combination that couldn’t be resolved.
“Our intent in coming together was to support Oregon’s health care system and the people that CareOregon serves,” the companies said in a statement sent to Home Health Care News. “However, despite our efforts, there are still questions about our combination. As a result, SCAN Group and CareOregon have mutually agreed to withdraw our applications with the Oregon regulatory agencies and to terminate our affiliation agreement.”
The Long Beach, California-based SCAN Group includes SCAN Health Plan – which is a Medicare Advantage plan – as well as multiple service lines, including home- and community-based senior care, home-based palliative care and home-based primary care, among others.
CareOregon is a Portland-based nonprofit health plan that helps more than 500,000 Oregonians access physical, mental and prescription health care coverage. It also has Housecall Providers, an in-home primary and palliative care business.
The two companies announced a planned merger at the end of 2022 under the name HealthRight Group.
SCAN CEO Sachin Jain was expected to lead the new venture and CareOregon CEO Eric Hunter would have maintained that title and led HealthRight’s Medicaid segment. The combined organization would have represented about $6.8 billion in revenue, the companies previously announced.
The initial plan was for SCAN’s Medicare portfolio and CareOregon’s predominantly Medicaid health plans to combine, creating a “mission-driven, nonprofit health care organization.”
HealthRight was expected to launch a diversified business unit that would have included assets from both organizations. Those plans have now dissolved.
The deal received some scrutiny from Oregon’s Medicaid Advisory Committee last year.
Specifically, the committee questioned the lack of transparency in SCAN’s acquisition of CareOregon — particularly regarding how this acquisition will benefit the Coordinated Care Organizations (CCOs) responsible for serving Oregon Health Plan (OHP) members.
“The flow of taxpayer dollars leaving the state and the potential loss of local control of CareOregon’s affiliated CCOs suggests that the merger may harm Oregonians by reducing access to health care, lessening the commitment to addressing health inequities and diverting financial resources currently available to local communities,” the committee wrote in a report. “For these reasons, we are recommending that, in the absence of sufficient responses to the questions below, OHA disapprove the SCAN/CareOregon transaction.”
In the joint statement, the companies emphasized that both entities are still committed to preserving and protecting nonprofit, locally-based health care.
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