UnitedHealth Wins Deal to Buy Home Health Company
Minnetonka-based health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group has prevailed in its competitive bid to acquire Louisiana-based home health care provider Amedisys Inc.
On Monday, the companies announced that UnitedHealth’s health services arm Optum will merge with Amedisys in a deal worth more than $3 billion. The agreement calls for UnitedHealth to acquire Amedisys’s outstanding common stock in an all-cash transaction for $101 per share.
On May 3, Amedisys first entered into a merger agreement with Option Care Health, which is a provider of post-acute care and infusion services. At the time, Option Care Health planned to buy Amedisys for $3.6 billion, Fierce Healthcare reported. In a report this week, however, The Wall Street Journal said that Option Care Health’s was ultimately valued at around $2.8 billion.
UnitedHealth presented its own counter offer in early June, which Amedisys executives said, “could reasonably be expected to result in a superior proposal.”
UnitedHealth’s bid is not, of course, a done deal. It still needs approval from both regulators and Amedisys shareholders. Whether the Federal Trade Commission will give its blessing isn’t clear. The Wall Street Journal reported that the new deal is “likely to draw close antitrust scrutiny” from the FTC.
It’s also worth noting that federal officials nearly derailed UnitedHealth’s $13 billion bid to acquire Tennessee-based health technology Change Healthcare a year ago. UnitedHealth ultimately prevailed in that deal.
Should the Amedisys deal go through, it would mark UnitedHealth’s second major home health acquisition in as many years. Last year, the company bought Louisiana-based in-home care provider LHC Group for $5.4 billion.
