Minneapolis-based Optum, UnitedHealth’s health services segment, has acquired independent physician group DaVita Medical Group for $4.9 billion in cash, officials announced today.
DaVita Medical Group, with clinics in Florida, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Washington, serves approximately 1.7 million patients per year through nearly 300 medical clinics featuring primary and specialist care. DaVita Medical Group also operates 35 urgent-care centers and six outpatient surgery centers.
DaVita will join with Optum’s physician-led primary, specialty, in-home, urgent- and surgery-care delivery services business. The combination will aim to “improve care quality, cost and patient satisfaction through integrated ambulatory care delivery systems enabled by information technology and supportive clinical services. Optum’s data, analytics, technologies and clinical expertise will help DaVita Medical Group physicians deliver even higher quality care more effectively to the patients they serve,” according to Optum officials in a press release announcement.
Following the transaction, DaVita Medical Group will become part of Optum’s OptumCare division, which today works with more than 80 health plans to serve millions of consumers annually through 30,000 affiliated physicians and hundreds of care facilities. Joe Mello, chief operating officer of DaVita Medical Group, will continue in a leadership role in the combined entity, as will the DaVita Medical Group leadership team.
“Combining DaVita Medical Group and Optum advances our shared goal of supporting physicians in delivering exceptional patient care in innovative and efficient ways while working with more than 300 healthcare payers across Optum in ways that better meet the needs of their members,” Larry C. Renfro, CEO of Optum, said in a statement.
Earlier this year, Optum merged with The Advisory Board’s healthcare business in a $1.3 billion deal. Optum was also named a Healthcare Informatics Most Interesting Vendor this year, after finishing first on the Healthcare Informatics 100 list of health IT vendors ranked by revenue for the third straight year. Optum self-reported a health IT revenue of $7.3 billion in 2016.
