Carelon sees CareBridge as foundation for home health business

INDIANAPOLIS – Carelon, a division of Elevance Health, recently entered into an agreement to acquire CareBridge, a value-based manager of home and community-based services for chronic and complex members that will serve as the foundation for its home health business, company officials announced during a conference call to discuss its third quarter 2024 financial results. 

"We're excited to continue to serve all its customers and members,” said Gail Koziara Boudreaux, president, CEO and director during the call. “Carelon Services is expanding its capabilities to manage a growing proportion of health care spending, supporting the long-term growth of the business and by extension, the value it creates for health plan customers.” 

Nashville, Tenn.-based CareBridge serves Medicaid and dually eligible patients with physical, intellectual and developmental disabilities by providing 24/7 access to an interdisciplinary clinical team of physicians, nurses, pharmacists and social workers. It provides patients with a tablet so that they, their families and their caregivers can access video visits from the company's clinical team 24 hours a day, seven days a week. 

In 2023, CareBridge took the No. 1 spot on Inc. Magazine's Inc. 5000 list of the fastest growing, privately owned companies in America. The company had grown nearly 5x, expanding from serving about 25,000 patients in July 2022 to serving about 115,000 patients in 2023. 

Currently, CareBridge, which was founded in 2019 by former Center for Medicare and Medication Innovation Director Brad Smith and former Sen. Bill Frist, serves patients in 17 states and the District of Columbia.  

• Related: Earlier this year, Elevance Health and private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice formed a strategic partnership to bring together certain care delivery and enablement assets of Elevance Health’s business unit Carelon Health and CD&R’s portfolio companies aspree health and Millenium Physician Group.