Amid Healthcare Merger Backlash, Amedisys Agrees To $3.3B UnitedHealth Deal

Home health company Amedisys has agreed to a $3.3 billion merger with UnitedHealth.

The deal calls for the acquisition of Amedisys’ outstanding common stock in an all-cash transaction for $101 per share and places Amedisys under the umbrella of UnitedHealth’s Optum arm, according to a Monday (June 26) press release.

“The combination of Amedisys with Optum unites two organizations dedicated to providing compassionate, value-based comprehensive care to patients and their families,” the companies said in the release.

With this merger, Amedisys has ended an earlier agreement to merge with Option Care Health and will pay that company a $106 million termination fee, according to a separate press release. Option said it will incorporate that fee into its capital allocation strategy.

Read more: California AG Seeks Power To Slow Healthcare Mega-Mergers

“While we are disappointed in this outcome, Option Care Health has a long track record of delivering value for our shareholders,” Option President and CEO John C. Rademacher said in the separate release.

The deal comes as UnitedHealth and Optum have been seeing growth, especially in the home health sector.

“Year to date, United Healthcare increased the number of people served in the U.S. by 1.2 million, about half of this total within our commercial offerings,” CEO Andrew Witty said on an earnings call in April. “At Optum Health, we’re now serving nearly 700,000 More patients under fully accountable value-based arrangements compared to just December 2022.”

Witty added that the company expects to serve more than 4 million patients “in fully accountable value-based care arrangements” this year through Optum, roughly double the number it was serving at the end of 2021.

UnitedHealth Group President and Chief Operating Officer Dirk McMahon went into further detail on the company’s ongoing shift to offering a greater mix of at-home health services.

“Nearly all the patients we’ll add this year in fully accountable value-based relationships will have access to support through our home-based platform,” McMahon told investors at the time. “Consumers value and benefit from services delivered in the home and we’ve expanded our capabilities to serve that need.”

Optum’s rationale for merging with Amedisys is akin to moves made in the past two years from companies ranging from Amazon to CVS in tapping into the growth of alternative approaches to delivering healthcare.