Humana wants to beef up CenterWell
In addition to releasing its report covering value-based care, Humana CFOSusan Diamond opened up Wednesday about the company’s strategy around CenterWell during a presentation at the Stephens Annual Investment Conference.
Broadly, Humana is focused on continuing to beef up its pharmacy, home health care and primary care verticals.
“From a capital deployment perspective, you’ll see us continue to do tuck in M&A across both primary care and home [health],” Diamond said. “We’ve been able to build a nice funnel with primary care, partly due to our health plan contracting strategies over the years.”
Diamond also noted that Humana sees value in creating greater density in the home health space.
In terms of home-based care, Humana is also focused on value-based models there, and excited about what’s possible with those capabilities.
“Today, it’s more in a traditional sense — home, DME and infusion — and where we can reduce costs and improve outcomes,” Diamond said. “I would say, we’re doing a great job creating value through more traditional levers by network contracting, [utilization management] and some of those things. The team continues to work on the clinical innovation, which we think is the real unlock, and where there’s substantially more dollars to be generated across the enterprise. I’d say we’re still early innings. They’re still trying to figure out exactly what interventions are necessary, and how to best deploy them to really realize the value.”
This could mean embracing models like SNF-at-home in the future, according to Diamond.