Best Buy is betting big on healthcare as it strikes deals with some of the nation’s largest hospital systems.
The company is partnering with several health systems including Advocate Health, Geisinger Health and Mount Sinai Health System for its expansion At-home care technology platform Current Health, which it acquired in late 2021 for $400 million,
“We’re excited about the momentum of home care, but this is still a nascent emerging part of the healthcare industry,” CEO Corey Barry said on an earnings call with investors last week. “We are essentially nurturing a start-up within a larger scale organization and leveraging Best Buy’s core assets, including Geek Squad, to grow a new business.”
Best Buy taps into healthcare with $800 million acquisition of GreatCall in 2018, which provides emergency response services to senior citizens. The next year, Best Buy acquired remote monitoring company Critical Signal Technologies. Its 2021 deal with Current Health was a big bet on home services, building on previous investments and further strengthening the retailer’s presence in healthcare.
With one of its latest agreements, Best Buy will provide technical support for its hospital-at-home program to Charlotte-based Atrium Health, which is part of the newly formed Advocate Health, which was announced in early 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. was launched in response. Best Buy’s Geek Squad staff will deliver the equipment and provide setup assistance to patients’ homes. Technical needs were previously handled within the atrium.
Dr. Rasu Shrestha, Chief Innovation and Commercialization Officer, Advocate Health, said that Atrium’s Hospital-at-Home program has served over 6,300 patients and saved nearly 25,000 hospital bed days since its launch. Providers help remotely monitor patients with cardiovascular problems, pneumonia, infections and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, among other conditions. If problems arise, patients are connected to Atrium’s care team.
“Best Buy Health brings their strengths around truly innovative, omnichannel experiences,” Shrestha said. “The reason we bet on this partnership is because we truly believe that we can bring so much to the table that is truly different, not just what others are doing in hospital-at-home or healthcare-in-place. -home space, but also truly unique and exactly what we needed in service of the communities we are a part of.”
Shrestha said the goal is to eventually spread these services across the country, including Advocate’s Southeast and Midwest footprints.
Deborah Di Sanzo, president of Best Buy Health, declined to provide financial details of the Atrium deal, but she characterized it as “an equal partnership” meant to simplify the at-home care process for patients .
New York-based Mount Sinai Health System partnered with Current Health on remote patient monitoring in 2020 and already monitors cancer patients at home. It is expanding to patients with high blood pressure and heart failure, said Dr. Arshad Rahim, senior vice president and chief medical officer for population health. The system is also looking into remote medical monitoring, which tracks non-physiological data such as respiration or musculoskeletal activity.
“It’s an easy way to measure disease management, especially when you’re managing a population. We manage over 400,000 lives at Mount Sinai Health System,” Rahim said. ,[Current has] Really open to becoming with us not just a vendor but a care delivery partner, including discussing how we partner with even more on populations where we bear the full financial risk.”
Geisinger is working with Best Buy to manage at-home care for patients with high-risk hypertension, diabetes and those recovering from sepsis, according to a spokeswoman for the Danville, Pennsylvania-based system. Geisinger launched a pilot program with Geek Squad this year for in-home delivery and setup.
On an earnings call last week, Barry said Best Buy plans to grow sales in its healthcare division at a faster rate than its base business for fiscal 2024, which ends in January. The revenue contribution of the division is small and it will take time to grow, he added.
However, the company has no plans to grow beyond its technical support role. Di Sanzo said, “Best Buy has never been caring. That’s not what Best Buy is about.”
Best Buy is one of many retailers taking advantage of the opportunity in the healthcare space. In January, Dollar General launches three mobile healthcare clinics in Tennessee. next month, CVS Health announces $10.6 billion acquisition of primary care provider Oak Street HealthOutline of plan to add 130 Oak Street sites by 2026. and last week, Walmart Health details its plans to add 28 new centers and expand to two new states.