Avera Health is selling its celebrated telemedicine services to an investment firm.
Avera eCare will become Avel eCare but its headquarters and 230 workers will remain in Sioux Falls. Patients will see no interruption of services.
The nonprofit is selling to Aquiline Capital Partners, which is based in New York and London.
Avera Health will continue to provide telehealth appointments to its patients, according to CEO Bob Sutton. But the company is selling several of its healthcare platforms including its ICU monitoring, school health and prison health systems.
Avera eCare products are used in more than 600 locations across 32 states. Sutton said Aquiline will expand eCare in the U.S. and globally.
“Sometimes stewardship means that you have to make available the resources that you have to impact the greater good,” he said. “And in this case, scaling eCare, just was not something that we as a midsized, Catholic healthcare system in the upper Midwest were going to be able to do to the degree which someone else could.”
Avera and Aquiline, both private companies, will not be disclosing the cost of the sale, which will be paid in cash.
Sutton said the money from the sale will be reinvested back into Avera Health operations. He declined to say if Avera will receive a discounted cost when it buys its old technology.