Latest news with #CurrentHealth
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Best Buy restructures health unit
This story was originally published on Healthcare Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Healthcare Dive newsletter. Best Buy reported $109 million in charges primarily linked to restructuring at the electronics retailer's health unit in its first quarter, the company said in earnings released Thursday. The company began restructuring its health business after it recorded a non-cash goodwill impairment charge of $475 million in its fourth quarter ended Feb. 1, linked to a downward revision in the long-term financial projections for its health segment. The retailer partners with healthcare organizations to provide in-home health services, but the business has taken 'longer to develop than we initially thought,' as providers grapple with financial challenges and the future of the federal government's hospital at home waiver seems uncertain, Best Buy CEO Corie Barry said during a call with investors Thursday. Best Buy Health offers technology and logistics to support home care, including services for seniors aging in place, remote patient monitoring and hospital at home. The retailer has notched several health technology acquisitions in recent years, including buying emergency response firm GreatCall in 2018 and senior remote monitoring company Critical Signal Technologies the following year. In 2021, Best Buy acquired home care platform Current Health. The company has also inked deals with health systems like Mass General Brigham, Geisinger and Atrium Health to support home care programs. Now, Best Buy seems to have hit some snags with its health unit. Although the company's active aging services, Lively senior cell phones and medical alerts, and parts of its care at home business 'remain very viable business models for the future,' its in-home health has been slower to scale, partly due to inconsistency in how long the federal government's hospital-at-home waiver will last, Barry said on an earnings call. The CMS' Acute Hospital Care At Home program, first enacted during the pandemic to boost hospital capacity during COVID-19 surges, allows approved Medicare-certified facilities to provide inpatient level care in patients' homes. But the program has only been extended for short bursts. In March, Congress extended the waiver through September, shortly before the program and Medicare telehealth flexibilities were set to expire. Another challenge for scaling hospital-at-home programs includes financial struggles among providers, Barry said. Hospitals have recently reported headwinds linked to market volatility and tariffs, as well as potential policy changes in Washington, like Medicaid cuts. Still, Best Buy expects benefits from 'ongoing efficiencies and effectiveness work streams,' including at the health unit, CFO Matthew Bilunas said on the earnings call. The company didn't respond to a request for comment for more details on its restructuring. 'I think all of us would agree we absolutely see a future where more of your healthcare is taken into your own hands using technology and technology devices,' Barry said. 'You can already see it across our assortment and across how people are choosing to take care of their own health and we will continue to lean into that part of the strategy.' Recommended Reading Best Buy inks third health system product development deal, with Mass General Brigham
Scotsman
07-05-2025
- Business
- Scotsman
How can we fix Scotland's big scale-up problem?
Companies with global potential need different kinds of pathways to make the impact they deserve Sign up to our Scotsman Money newsletter, covering all you need to know to help manage your money. Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Scotland is a brilliant place to start a business. We've built a robust ecosystem that supports early-stage ventures. We haven't yet, however, cracked the code of creating global-scale businesses. Relative to the rest of UK and Europe, few startups get past 50 employees and fewer hit £20m in annual revenue, never mind £100m. A recent report from Sifted disappointingly found only two of the UK's 100 fastest-growing companies were from Scotland (Holibob and PlayerData). Our system is not yet wired for scale. Richard Lennox is an expert in business scaleups Today, our entrepreneurial programmes cast a wide net. They are inclusive by design, and rightly so. Perhaps it's time we created a different kind of pathway for the top 10 per cent of high-potential growth companies: those with the capacity, ambition and market to become the next Skyscanner, FanDuel or Current Health. These ventures need more than general, educational support. They need targeted connections, tailored advice from those who have lived the scaleup journey and, most importantly, an injection of global ambition. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Gareth Williams didn't just want Skyscanner to be a top travel site — he wanted it to be one of the top ten websites in the world. That clarity of purpose gave us focus, and belief. Without that mindset, scale is out of reach. Gareth Williams wanted Skyscanner to be one of the top ten websites in the world Yet, culturally, Scotland, can be tough on ambition. Few scoffed at Bill Gates when he said he wanted a computer on every desk but, here, we sometimes discourage that kind of vision. Even our curriculum reflects that: at my son's school they're learning about Brunel but not James Watt. We need to reconnect with our own legacy of innovation. To meet that ambition, we must recognise that for a Scottish scaleup, your customer isn't local. They're in the US, Asia, or Europe. You need to meet them there from Day One. At Current Health, Chris McGhee, our CEO, spent nearly every other week in the US directly engaging with customers. It wasn't glamorous, it was necessary, and fundamental to our growth. As I speak to founders and leaders, a gap exists almost universally in the level of support that they get and the networks they need. Most business advisors, including investors, have never scaled a company themselves and certainly not a technology company. We need to better incentivise founders and leaders who've done it before; not just through mentorship, but through real value exchange. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad What if Scotland convened a 'global-first' founder/operator network offering our entrepreneurs a front door in any major city, through Scotland House, for example? Somewhere to meet customers and get a warm introduction to allies that moves the needle. Capital remains another critical lever. Venture capital has its place but a 30x return on investment in 5-10 years is a tough target, and not every great company fits that model. We also need to go out of Scotland to meet growth investors. Events like investor event EIE25 are the exception because they bring together concentrated opportunity. But, most of the time, it's on us to get in front of them. University spinouts remain a potential bright spot. Companies like Neuranics and Prothea Technologies show what's possible. As Entrepreneur-in-Residence for the University of Edinburgh's Venture Builder Incubator, I've seen founders bringing unique technology to market, but the tech is only 50 per cent of the business – the rest is sales, positioning and customer insight. A co-founder with commercial instincts could be game-changing if we can find a path to making introductions.
