After years of fighting, the $3.3 billion acquisition of home health provider AMEDISYS by the UnitedHealth Group Optum may end up.
The agency announced Thursday that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has reached an agreement with UnitedHealth Group and Amedisys.
The proposed settlement still must be approved by the judge. This will require UnitedHealth and Amedisys to divest 164 home health and hospice locations in 19 states to Brightspring Health Services or Pennant Group, both home health care companies. The Justice Department said that this is about $528 million in annual revenue and will be the biggest divestiture of outpatient care services that address the merger challenge.
“In any area of our economy, the well-being of Americans is more important than health care. The settlement protects the quality and price competition for hundreds of thousands of vulnerable patients and the wage competition for thousands of nurses,” said Abigail Slater, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department's anti-protest department.
If the United States cannot obtain approval for the sale-related assets, UN Health may also need to divest eight facilities. Additionally, the transaction has a monitor installed to oversee the divestiture process and ensure compliance. Amedisys will pay a $1.1 million fine after it wrongly proves that it fully responds to federal documents requests and conducts training under antitrust rules.
UnitedHealth Group's Optum first announced plans for the deal in 2023, but the Justice Department filed a lawsuit in November to block the acquisition, believing that it would eliminate competition between UnitedHealth and Amedisys due to UnitedHealth's previous acquisition of home health and hospice company LHC Group. UnitedHealth and AMEDIS have had other divestitures in the past in the past in an attempt to reach the deal – including one with the Vitalcaring Group – but they are not enough.
In response to the proposed settlement, an Optum spokesman said the company was “happy to reach a solution and thanked the Department of Justice for its collaboration. Together with AMEDISYS, we look forward to continuing meaningful improvements in home health and hospice care, an important part of our value-based approach to care.”
A spokesperson for AMEDISY noted that the merger with Optum “will mark an important milestone in the continued growth and evolution of AMEDISY. This strategic consistency represents an important step in our ability to deliver excellent care and innovative solutions in our homes to deliver more patients and families.”
While UnitedHealth and Amedisys seem to be satisfied with the proposed settlement, others are concerned about the impact on hospice patients and nurses. This includes the U.S. Economic Freedom Project, a nonprofit that fights monopoly companies.
The group believes that a new set of problems has arisen for bright resilience and the divestment of the tournament. Brightspring is owned by private equity firm KKR, which is currently dealing with another antitrust lawsuit from the Justice Department. In addition, group house examinations of patients with intellectual and developmental disabilities found serious violations involving abuse, neglect and understaffed caregivers. One of the owners of the Penfanent Group is the promotion of the health system, which previously settled discriminatory settlements related to immigration by the Ministry of Justice.
“This must be a settlement … a cave for one of the most dangerous monopolies in U.S. health care, senior policy analyst for the U.S. Economic Freedom Project Healthcare Project. “It claims to divest family health and hospice health care providers in an overlapping market, but in fact, keep them out, including similar conflicting buyers, including a highly forgotten private equity firm. As a result, large medicines will profit from the expenses of fragile hospice patients, some of whom will pay them, as well as their lives and the workers who care for them.”
Photo: Alexsl, Getty Images
