BLOOMFIELD, Conn. and MERCER ISLAND, Wash., June 1, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- CarepathRx Health System Solutions (CHSS), a CarepathRx company and portfolio company of Nautic Partners (Nautic), and Evernorth Health Services, a subsidiary of The Cigna Group (NYSE: CI), announced a new strategic partnership and investment by Evernorth in CHSS. The strategic partnership brings together Evernorth's diverse specialty and care expertise with CHSS' robust pharmacy and infusion management capabilities, technology solutions, and health system relationships to improve, expand, and accelerate pharmacy care delivery for the growing number of patients with chronic and complex care needs.

The CHSS and Evernorth partnership will deliver integrated specialty pharmacy care to CHSS' growing base of 600-plus hospitals, health systems, and physicians – helping diversify the services they offer to best support patients. This includes enhanced coordinated infusion services, virtual care capabilities, value-based care arrangements, and site of care flexibility. Evernorth's expansive suite of services, including Accredo's specialty care and pharmacy expertise and CuraScript SD's specialty medication distribution across 12,000 physicians, is highly complementary to CHSS' capabilities that help health systems expand in-house specialty pharmacies, infusion and polypharmacy services.  

"Forging deeper relationships with physicians and other specialty and infusion pharmacies – a critical point of care for people with chronic and complex needs – is a key priority as we work to increase access to care and improve affordability," said Eric Palmer, President and CEO, Evernorth. "Specialty care continues to be a focal point for hospital, health system, and physician partners, and our collaboration with CHSS is an important step in delivering on our commitment to bring them even more patient care services to improve overall outcomes."

Together, over time, CHSS' and Evernorth's expertise will help enable simpler, faster connections to care for patients managing chronic and complex specialty conditions. As many of these patients need specialty or acute drug therapies, the partnership will focus on continuity of care for specialty drugs, management of infusion services across sites of care – from ambulatory to physician office to home settings – and value-based site-of-care strategies. The intent is to drive optimal patient treatment plans and deepen physician engagement, resulting in better patient experiences, more care extensions, and greater affordability.

"At CarepathRx, we believe health systems, hospitals, and physicians play the most important roles in providing the best care to patients with chronic and complex diseases," said John Figueroa, Chairman and CEO, CarepathRx.  "Through specialty and infusion pharmacy partnerships, CHSS has created a model for health systems to extend their reach to alternate sites of care and into the home. This partnership with Evernorth is truly unique and will accelerate CHSS' mission by creating payer-physician connections and leveraging Evernorth's specialty and care services."

Evernorth's significant minority investment in CHSS is expected to close in late Q2 or early Q3 of 2023. After close, the CHSS management team will continue to lead the business and, together with Nautic, will retain majority ownership.

Centerview Partners acted as lead financial advisor and Cantor Fitzgerald is also acting as financial advisor to CarepathRx and Nautic. Kirkland & Ellis LLP acted as legal advisor to CarepathRx and Nautic.

Greenhill & Co. acted as financial advisor to Evernorth. Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and Quarles & Brady LLP acted as legal advisors to Evernorth.

About Evernorth Health Services 

Evernorth Health Services creates pharmacy, care, and benefits solutions to improve health and increase vitality. We relentlessly innovate to make the prediction, prevention, and treatment of illness and disease more accessible to millions of people. Evernorth capabilities are powered by our businesses, including Express Scripts, Express Scripts Pharmacy, Accredo, eviCore, and MDLIVE, along with holistic Evernorth platforms and solutions that move people and organizations forward. All Evernorth solutions are serviced and provided by or through operating affiliates of Evernorth Health, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Cigna Group (NYSE: CI), or third-party partners. Learn more at evernorth.com. 

About CarepathRx

CarepathRx is transforming pharmacy care delivery for health systems and hospitals, delivering improved patient outcomes that drive clinical, quality, and financial results. Through the industry's most comprehensive, end-to-end hospital pharmacy care delivery model, CarepathRx is turning hospital pharmacy into an active care management strategy and revenue generator while providing support across the patient's complete healthcare journey. The company takes an enterprise approach, providing a powerful combination of technology, market-leading clinical pharmacy services, and wrap-around services that optimize pharmacy performance across the enterprise for fully integrated pharmacy operations, expanded healthcare services, improved ambulatory access, minimized clinical variation, and new health system revenue streams. Today, CarepathRx serves more than 25 health systems and 600 hospitals, with more than 1,500 employees nationwide. For more information about CarepathRx, visit www.carepathrxllc.com.

About Nautic Partners

Nautic Partners is a Providence, Rhode Island-based middle-market private equity firm that focuses our expertise and market knowledge on three sectors: Healthcare, Industrials and Services. Nautic has completed 155 platform transactions throughout our 37-year history. In pursing our thematic and proactive investment strategy, we seek to partner with executives and management teams in an effort to accelerate the growth trajectory of our portfolio companies via acquisitions, targeted operating initiatives, and increased management team depth. For more information, please visit www.nautic.com.

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