Humana and the Payer-Agnostic Circle of Life

By Clive Riddle, March 19, 2021

Humana on Saint Patty’s Eve announced their new brand – CenterWell – “to describe and connect a range of the company’s payer-agnostic health care services offerings.”  Their senior-focused primary care facilities, including the multi-state Centerwell Primary Care, and Florida based Family Physicians Group will be included under the brand.

Centerwell will ultimately encompass Humana’s other health care services as well. Humana notes that in recent years it has “significantly expanded its health care services capabilities – from primary care to pharmacy to home care and more – in order to better serve its medical members, and to significantly strengthen its payer-agnostic care offerings. Now, the company is taking the next step with plans to unite various payer-agnostic services under the new CenterWell brand.”

“Payer-agnostic” is not a new term. A 2013 New England Journal article Payer Agnosticism, comes to mind, for example. But Humana has certainly been advancing the term to a whole new level during the past year, deploying the term seven times in their mpst recent announcement.

In January, during another “payer-agnostic” company announcement, Humana unveiled plans to open twenty more primary care centers during 2021, five more than in 2020; bringing the total Partners in Primary Care locations to 80 with a goal of 100 center by 2023.

The payer-agnostic approach for differs from a classic clinically integrated model in that the owned health care services are promoted and provided to serve multiple payers, instead of just the payer-owner. But never-the-less, it is interesting to see the Humana’s “circle of life” evolution of strategy of a healthcare provider turned health plan, now turned health plan / healthcare provider:

• 1972 - Founders David Jones and Wendell Cherry sold their nation’s largest nursing home company to capitalize acquiring hospitals
• 1974 – The new hospital company corporate name is changed to Humana
• 1984 – Humana starts its own health plan operations, as do other national hospital chains
• 1993 – Humana spins off its 77 hospitals to create Galen Health Care, similar to spin-off moves previously taken by other national hospital chains. But unlike they other chains, they spun of the hospitals as opposed to the health plans.
• 1994 – Galen Health Care is sold to Hospital Corporation of America (HCA)
• 2015 – Aetna acquisition of Humana is announced, but then falls apart over the next 18 month.
• 2018 – Humana participates with two private equity firms in acquisition of Kindred Healthcare.  Humana merges four owned Florida clinics from separate previous integrated plan acquisitions into one operating unit that will also service non-Humana patients
• 2020 - $600 million deal with New York-based private equity firm Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe is announced to capitalize growth of Partners in Primary Care