Quest Diagnostics will acquire the patient engagement company Pack Health, the organizations announced Tuesday.
Pack Health tracks patients' medication adherence, diet, exercise, mental health and other issues for health plans and pharmaceutical companies to try to improve patients' chronic conditions. The undisclosed all-cash equity transaction builds on Quest Diagnostics's 2018 acquisition of remote monitoring company MedXM, which will create new service lines for Quest, executives said.
"Quest Diagnostics and Pack Health have complementary capabilities that, when combined, will strengthen our ability to help health plans and other risk-bearing organizations deliver value-based care," Dermot Shorten, senior vice president of strategy, mergers and acquisitions, and ventures at Quest Diagnostics, wrote in an email.
MedXM, now Quest HealthConnect, assesses patients' health risk factors to hone treatment programs. Health plans, particularly Medicare Advantage and managed Medicaid, use the data to coordinate care with physicians, generate risk scores and track outcomes.
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Quest Diagnostics has also been managing health systems' lab operations and building out related data services. The company acquired Mercy's outreach laboratory business last year and teamed up with healthcare data analysis company hc1 in 2019 to try to prevent health systems from ordering too many or too few tests.
Pack Health will operate as part of Quest Diagnostics's extended care division and primarily will focus on health plans seeking to strengthen their value-based care programs as well as drug companies' medication management and education programs, Shorten wrote.
Quest Diagnostics's revenue jumped 14% to $10.8 billion in 2021, fueled in part by an increase in COVID-19 testing services, the company said in a preliminary earnings report. The Pack Health transaction is expected to close in the first quarter.
