This weekend, Teladoc Health announced its $600 million purchase of InTouch Health, a fellow telehealth provider focused on enterprise offerings.
The big ticket move is an effort to build a single point of entry for integrated virtual care across conditions, and across provider and consumer markets, the companies wrote in their announcement.
''Today marks a bold leap forward in Teladoc Health's mission to transform how high-quality healthcare is accessed and experienced, making virtual care available for patients with even the most critical care needs," Jason Gorevic, CEO of Teladoc Health, said in a statement. "Bringing these companies together will make Teladoc Health the clear virtual care leader across every front door of healthcare, further accelerating the adoption and impact of virtual care for millions of people around the world.”
The deal is expected to close before the end of the second financial quarter, according to the companies. About a quarter of the $600 payment is being made in cash, with the rest coming as Teladoc Health common stock. InTouch Health CEO Joe DeVivo told MobiHealthNews that he “will continue at the helm of InTouch Health as we work towards the deal close,” but was sparse on details about where exactly he and others from his company will be fitting into Teladoc’s corporate structure.
WHAT’S THE IMPACT
InTouch, according to the companies, has partnerships in place with more than 450 hospitals and health systems, and worldwide is supporting over 3,600 care sites. Its enterprise offering provides support for over 40 clinical use cases.
Unifying these products and clients with Teladoc’s existing business will yield an international virtual care juggernaut that touches nearly every major market segment within healthcare, DeVivo explained.
“As a combined organization, we will uniquely be equipped to offer a single solution with unmatched breadth and depth of virtual care delivery and enablement capabilities — spanning award-winning technology and engagement expertise, an expansive medical network and fully scalable operational infrastructure,” DeVivo told MobiHealthNews in an email statement. “Beyond the four walls of the traditional care facility, our combined capabilities will cover the full range of acuity in a way that no other offering can — from critical to chronic to everyday care — across all sites of care. This includes home, pharmacy, retail, physician office, ambulance and more.”
DeVivo said these fleshed out offerings could be particularly appealing to stakeholders who are already working to provide an integrated healthcare experience to their patients.
“[The deal] enables us to look for synergies in the hospital and health plan markets,” he said. “For example, for health plans that own or partner with hospitals through value-based care arrangements, Teladoc Health will offer innovative, integrated virtual care solutions that support a unified experience for the health plan’s members, the health system’s patients, and provider-to-provider applications."
THE LARGER TREND
Teladoc Health has enjoyed rising revenues over the last year or so, according to its quarterly earnings reports, although it did undergo some noteworthy shakeups at the executive level in the wake of former VP, COO and CFO Mark Hirschhorn’s resignation. The virtual care company hasn’t shied away from purchasing other telehealth providers, with deals over the past couple of years ranging from the the tens of thousands (TelaDietitian) to the hundreds of millions (Advance Medical, Best Doctors).
Still, Teladoc isn’t the only telehealth provider looking to shore up its business. In November, American Well struck a deal to acquire Aligned Telehealth that, at the time, it said would make it the largest enterprise telepsychiatry platform operating within the US. This news was followed just a month later by the merger of InSight Telepsychiatry and Regroup Telehealth, a move that the two similarly claimed would yield the country’s largest telepsychiatry provider.
