Aledade, an independent primary care network, announced Tuesday that it has acquired value-based care analytics company Curia.

Bethesda, Maryland-based Aledade is a public benefit corporation with a focus on value-based care and aims to reduce unnecessary hospitalizations among patients. Curia, based in Washington, D.C., uses artificial intelligence to find risk gaps and predict the chances of adverse health outcomes in patients. By acquiring the company, Aledade will be able to improve its ability to pull valuable insights from data and give more accurate healthcare predictions for its patients.

The acquisition follows a pilot program between Aledade and Curia. By using Curia’s predictive algorithm, Aledade was able to identify more than 8,000 patients with the highest risk for mortality, and work with its primary care practices to get them enrolled in a comprehensive advance care planning (CACP) facilitation.

In addition to the acquisition, Aledade also announced that it has added more than 450 primary care practices to its network for 2023. This includes nearly 60 health centers. In total, the company now works with more than 1,500 independent primary care practices and health centers (up from 1,000 in 2022). Its network has more than 5,000 physicians and 15,000 clinicians in 45 states. Aledade also has more than 150 value-based contracts across Medicare, Medicare Advantage, Medicaid and commercial plans.

“As we signed up those practices, it became easier and easier, more relevant to health plans,” said Dr. Farzad Mostashari, CEO and co-founder of Aledade, in an interview. “So we got more health plan contracts, and as we got more health plan contracts, it was easier to sign up practices … So that’s kind of the flywheel or the virtuous cycle that’s going now.”

With the added practices, the company claims to be the largest network of independent primary care. Other similar companies include Agilon and Oak Street Health, the latter of which is pending an acquisition from CVS Health for $10.6 billion. While primary care assets appear to be of major interest to retail giants like CVS Health, Amazon and Walgreens, an acquisition isn’t quite on the horizon for Aledade.

“It seems that the most likely scenario for Aledade to be able to continue our mission is to remain an independent company,” Mostashari stated.

Instead, the company plans to continue moving as it has been by adding additional primary care centers to its network and signing more contracts with health plans, Mostashari said. Aledade is also working to improve its prediction and intervention capabilities.

“Number one, [we want] more practices, more patients, more contracts … The number two priority is continuing to look for ways to be better in prediction and intervention with those very particular subsets of patient populations through Aledade care solutions to get more impact on reducing hospitalizations and ER visits,” Mostashari said.

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