Tabula Rasa HealthCare, Inc. (NASDAQ: TRHC) has acquired PrescribeWellness, a cloud-based patient engagement solutions company. Based in Irvine, California, PrescribeWellness facilitates collaboration between more than 10,000 pharmacies with patients, payers, providers and pharmaceutical companies. It provides patient services such as medication home-delivery, appointment scheduling, Medicare plan reviews and more.
The acquisition cost Tabula $150 million, roughly 5x PrescribeWellness’ 2018 revenue of $29 million. This acquisition supports its goals to expand medication risk mitigation programs in community pharmacies and provide them with clinical revenue opportunities beyond dispensing. The company is now able to participate in Medicare Part D Medication Therapy Management and similar programs, which require or can benefit from the involvement of community pharmacies.
Although the digital health sector has become all-encompassing lately, Tabula’s transaction has a common denominator with a number of deals from 2018: patient engagement. A platform that allows a healthcare company to coordinate and work with a patient in a myriad of ways seems to be a new focus for mergers and acquisitions.
In fact, in May 2018 PrescribeWellness reported its own transaction, grabbing VoicePort‘s pharmacy-related assets to offer a more comprehensive communications platform for pharmacies.
Then in November, GetWellNetwork, Inc. acquired HealthLoop, Inc. The target operates an SaaS platform that enables medical practices to monitor signs and symptoms and to communicate with patients during the recovery process.
GetWellNetwork hopes to develop a joint company called GetWell Loop, which will combine HealthLoop’s patient monitoring digital platform with GetWell’s Precision Engagement program for patients. Prices were not disclosed in these transactions.
There were a total of 10 deals with this underlying focus in 2018. Another one worth highlighting is Allscripts’ (NASDAQ: MDRX) purchase of Health Grid, a patient communication app maker. Its solutions cover the care continuum from pre-care notifications, to point-of-care registration, to post-care follow-up. Allscripts paid $60 million in cash and offered up to $50 million in payouts.
