Accendra Health bets on Optum contract, leaner structure

RICHMOND, Va. – With the sale of its Products & Healthcare Services (P&HS) segment behind it, Accendra Health is entering 2026 as a more “nimble” company, say execs. 

New focus brings fresh start 

The company on Dec. 31 completed the sale of its Products & Healthcare Services (P&HS) business to Platinum Equity for $375 million, and began operating under the name Accendra Health. 

“We're entering 2026 as a much leaner and more nimble business with a much higher margin profile post-PNHS divestiture,” said Edward Pesicka, president and CEO, during a recent call to discuss the company’s fourth quarter and full-year 2025 earnings. “We have already taken actions to lean out our business and expect to continue taking actions to eliminate costs to address the loss of a large commercial payer as well as stranded costs.”  

Filling the gaps 

The company had previously announced the loss of a contract with Kaiser, and said on the call that the impact on revenue will significantly increase throughout 2026 in aggregate to approximately $300 million in 2026 versus 2025 and approximately an additional $40 million in 2027. 

“We anticipate that we will have completely lapped the impact of this revenue loss by the end of the first quarter of 2027,” said Pesicka. “We are on our way to replacing this lost revenue margin.” 

That includes the launch of a new contract with Optum Health. In September, Owens & Minor announced that Apria Healthcare and Byram Healthcare, both part of the Owens & Minor family, had entered into a new national provider agreement with the payer. 

The contract is still in its early stages, but it’s gaining traction, says Pesicka. 

“We know we won't fill and completely fill in the gap,” he said. “So you can see from our walk on revenue, but it does create opportunity for us to redeploy resources to start to backfill that revenue with other revenue, whether it be a preferred provider agreement or just expansion of existing contracts and relationships that we have.” 

Inflation pressures create space for manufacturer relationships 

Asked whether the company is concerned about the impact of manufacturer cost increases, tariffs and inflation potentially on the horizon, Accendra sees an opportunity to work more closely with manufacturers, says Pesicka.  

“I think it creates opportunity for us to work closer with various manufacturing partners to look at different pricing models and growth incentives and other things like that,” he said. So that's where we think about it and where we're going to be able to go after and attack it. So I think that hopefully frames it out. It's not necessarily tariff related. It is more related to normal inflation that we've seen historically and then our ability now to work that down as the year progresses.”