Elevance Health Inc. (NYSE:ELV) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

And then to your specific question, the impact here was to increase our sequential days in claims payable quarterly result by approximately 1.7 days.

Gail Boudreaux: Thank you. Next question, please.

Operator: Next, we’ll go to the line of Josh Raskin from Nephron Research. Please, go ahead.

Josh Raskin: Hi, thanks. Good morning. I wanted to get back to the partnership with CD&R and specifically what alternatives did you evaluate and consider before coming to this arrangement? And I think in the past, you were stressing more and I’ve heard it today as well that focus on specialty care. So how does that fit in and sort of get bolted on, on top of this? And maybe where does this fit into your longer term national approach? And then how important was it that you could serve multiple memberships inside not just Medicare Advantage? Thanks.

Gail Boudreaux: Yeah, thanks for the question, Josh, because I think it very much aligns to the strategy that we’ve laid out. I guess first and foremost, it’s payor-agnostic, and it was really important. We’ve always said that our goal, given the diversity of our business mix, serve all members across all business lines, given the depth and density of our membership on our local markets, that is very important. We had a partnership already working with many of these assets. So as I said, we know the membership — we know the leadership teams, we know the value that can be created. And so, we have been working with them and feel quite good about what we can create. This is payor-agnostic, which we also think is very important.

And again, this will help us continue through having a focus on advanced primary care, it’s still very much focused on our chronic patients and complex patients. And we are still building specialty care enablement, which is, again, another very important component of what we’re trying to probe through. So I think from that value-based care across all lines of business, a critical part of our strategy, very consistent, driving value-based care, continuing to drive much more downside risk, which means that we needed strong enabling capabilities to help practices work their way through that. We know that it takes time. It is also a technology-driven model. So one of the nice things about this partnership is that there are embedded technology assets to digitally-enabled care as well.

And then we have a focus on patient access and experience in the adoption of next generation models. So again, consistent with the strategy that we’ve had over the last several years, not really a diversion, I think, from that. And I think the timing for us was right because we have been experimenting with multiple models and have a lot of experience in the space right now. So thank you very much for the question. Next question, please.

Operator: Next, we’ll go to the line of Ben Hendrix from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Ben Hendrix: Hey, thank you very much. Just another question on the CD&R partnership. To what extent are these primary care platforms taking risk currently? Is that something that we will need to see develop as we kind of get more of these digital enablement abilities from Carelon? Just wanted to see if over the five-year horizon to full ownership, if we can expect to kind of get the full capitation on those platforms over that time period? Thanks.

Gail Boudreaux: Thanks, Ben. I’m going to have Pete probably provide a lot more context. But just quickly, about a third of the membership is under risk arrangement now. So with that, Pete, why don’t you give a little more color into the relationship and how we see it evolve.

Peter Haytaian: That’s great. Thanks for the question, Ben. And I’ll give you a little bit more color on the assets and the capabilities. They really all have their distinct strengths. We see great opportunities, quite frankly, to cross-pollinate. When you think about MPG to your question on risk, they really are a leader in managing Medicare and commercial risk. And they’ve also got a very strong chassis I think, for future growth and a proven model in that regard in terms of acquiring and providing practices. So very strong at managing risk and a lot of capabilities in that regard. What’s really interesting about apree and Gail referenced this is they’ve got a differentiating technology and navigation capabilities with a real strong focus on the commercial business.

So a really nice entry point for us. We’ve been working on relationships already in this regard. And I’m really excited about that because we, obviously, as a company, have a really strong commercial footprint, a really nice entry point for us. And then, of course, Carelon Health advanced primary care which is a leader in managing the complex and the chronic and largely takes risk today. We see a tremendous opportunity in a variety of ways for that. One, from a technology perspective, state-of-the-art EMR that we can upgrade as well as from a growth perspective in terms of partnering with MPG and apree. And then finally, and Gail mentioned this, but I’ll reiterate it, a tremendous opportunity to wrap around existing Carelon services to this arrangement that will create value for all three assets.

So, appreciate the question.

Mark Kaye: And then 1 quick financial remark just at the end of Pete’s comments there. We do expect the consolidated entity once formed to have over $4 billion in annualized debt revenue.

Gail Boudreaux: Thank you. Next question, please.

Operator: Next, we’ll go to the line of Dave Windley from Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Dave Windley: Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I’ll switch topics over to Medicaid. Your redetermination enrollment impacts seem to, maybe pick up some momentum in the quarter. I think you said 90% of members have now been redetermined. I wondered If you could give us some view of kind of how you expect that to gate out over the next several quarters? And then from a risk pool and rate adequacy standpoint, could you update on how that looks now that the membership is whittling down? Thank you.

Gail Boudreaux: Thank you. I’m going to have Felicia Norwood address your questions.