Aledade Acquires Advance Care Planning Company Iris Healthcare

Aledade Acquires Advance Care Planning Company Iris Healthcare

What You Should Know:

Aledade acquires Iris Healthcare, a provider of advanced care planning solutions for tens of thousands of patients across the country. Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.

– As Aledade continues to grow exponentially, the company plans to integrate new patient care solutions to help extend the capabilities of its partner primary care practices.

When individuals face a serious illness, healthcare becomes central to their life. In a crisis, every healthcare decision can have a major impact. Iris believes that advance care planning deserve the same level of consideration as buying a home, planning a wedding or any other major life event

Advance Care Planning Solutions

Iris Healthcare is a scalable, personalized, virtual platform model specially designed for comprehensive advance care planning (ACP). Comprehensive ACP is a robust process designed to ensure that people receive medical care consistent with their values, goals, and preferences during serious and chronic illness by formally documenting those wishes in an advance directive. Despite robust literature demonstrating that participation in an ACP program can help improve patient health outcomes and lower unnecessary care utilization, thereby lowering costs, Medicare data reports that only about 2.8 percent of seniors end up having these discussions with their doctor.

The acquisition follows a successful pilot program completed by the companies, which demonstrated better outcomes, higher patient satisfaction and lower costs when using Iris’ service as well as significant improvements through use of Aledade’s predictive algorithm and data, helping better identify patients who could most benefit from ACP.

Iris Healthcare Becomes Part of New Health Services Arm

By helping more patients receive care consistent with their values, their preferences, and the best clinical evidence, Aledade’s first acquisition will augment the support that Aledade delivers to its nationwide network of more than 1,000 independent primary care practices and health centers. As part of the transaction, Iris Healthcare will become a part of Aledade Care Solutions, Aledade’s new health services unit. This unit will give Aledade practices new ways to improve patient outcomes and lower costs by integrating new patient care solutions. 

Acquisition Impact

The acquisition of Iris Healthcare and the establishment of a new health services arm come on the heels of significant growth for Aledade. The network of practices and health centers working with Aledade now spans 37 states and has grown by 20 percent over the last year. Aledade’s value-based care contracts collectively cover more than 1.7 million patients and manage roughly $17B in total health care spending through 98 Medicare and 47 other value-based contracts. For the second straight year, the company is profitable, with gross revenue of over $300M in 2021 and believes that it is currently on the path to more than double that by 2023. Aledade, Aledade Care Solutions, and Iris Healthcare are all poised for significant ongoing growth in the coming years.

“Today, more than 1.7 million patients are getting better primary care from their own family physicians – more engaged, more accessible, and more empowered primary care,” said Farzad Mostashari, MD, CEO and co-founder of Aledade. “We’ve seen the results, in reduced emergency department visits, hospitalizations, and lives saved, when it’s more profitable to prevent a stroke than to treat it. But there is more that we can do. With Aledade Care Solutions, we can now bring the first of a series of additional services that are most valuable to patients and families, and also more profitable, when delivered in a value-based world through referrals by primary care clinicians whom patients trust. Empowering and enabling primary care means extending what primary care practices can do, and we’re excited to begin this new chapter by welcoming Iris Healthcare to the Aledade team.”