Best Buy Co. (NYSE: BBY) has doubled down on its commitment to the senior home-care market. In August 2018, the consumer electronics retail giant announced its acquisition of GreatCall, Inc. for $800 million.
GreatCall’s product offering includes senior-friendly hardware combined with one-touch connectivity to trained agents who can answer questions, dispatch emergency personnel, connect to family caregivers and provide additional concierge services. Best Buy is already familiar with consumer-help services, beginning with its technology-focused Geek Squad and In-Home Advisors, and its national distribution system helped to scale GreatCall’s consumer monitoring devices and services.
Now comes the acquisition of Critical Signals Technologies, which Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly revealed on the company’s Q1:19 earnings call on May 23. (He did not reveal the price, however.) Critical Signals provides remote patient monitoring services for seniors such as at-home wellness coaching, medication management, telehealth services and in-home vital sign monitoring. It has approximately 100,000 patients and partnerships with 1,500 payers.
Those payers were part of the attraction for Best Buy, as some of Critical Signals’ services may be reimbursed as supplemental benefits under Medicare Advantage plans. Joly added that the company is looking forward to engaging with insurers to build the GreatCall service into their plans.
Best Buy is also adding a third GreatCall call center in San Antonio, Texas in October 2019. It will be staffed with 400 “care agents” and provide 24×7 technical phone support, concierge services and urgent response services to subscribers.
