Home Health & Hospice Week

Plus: Chains stress their acquisition focus.

Industry consolidation is the name of the game for the four publicly traded home care chains that are seeking to grow. Amedisys Inc., LHC Group Inc., Kindred at Home (formerly Gentiva), and Almost Family stressed their acquisitions and admission growth numbers in their releases covering their earnings for 2015.

Baton Rouge-based Amedisys had the second-highest revenues, but was also the only home health company to report a loss for the year ended Dec. 31. The chain reported a $2.3 million loss on $1.28 billion in revenues for the year, compared to a $13.1 million profit on $1.20 billion in revenues for 2014, according to its release.

The company’s stock price still increased, however, based on Amedisys beating stock analyst expectations for its fourth quarter of the year.

The company with the highest revenues was Louisville, Ky.-based Kindred at Home, reporting $1.6 billion for its home health division and $656.5 million for its hospice division in 2015. That compares to $298.9 million and $50.1 million for 2014, before Kindred bought Gentiva for $1.8 billion.

Kindred didn’t report net income for its Kindred at Home division, but the behemoth health care company reported an overall net loss of $50.9 million, which is actually down from a $61.4 million loss in 2014. Still, the company beat analyst predictions for adjusted income and revenues overall.

Kindred at Home makes up about half of the company’s earnings, CEO Benjamin Breier said at the Barclays Global Healthcare Conference in Miami, according to the Louisville Business First newspaper.

LHC reported net income of $28.8 million on $812.4 million in revenues for 2015, compared to a $41.7 million profit on $733.6 million in revenues the previous year, according to a release. And Almost Family recorded a $19.5 million profit on $532.2 million in revenues for the year ended Jan. 1, 2016, compared to a $13.5 million profit on $495.8 million in revenues for 2014, it says in a release.

LHC and Almost Family noted their Value-Based Purchasing strengths. “LHC Group is well positioned for the shift in the reimbursement system to value-based payment models, which incentivize payors to leverage the capabilities of high quality home health providers,” LHC CEO Keith Meyers says in its release. “We are already seeing an increase in the volume and acuity of our admissions as payors shift patients from more intensive and more expensive clinical settings,” he continues. “With this shift intensifying over the coming years, we expect to be a leading partner of choice for health systems and payors as they seek to improve their patients’ non-acute care.”

All four companies emphasized growth and acquisitions in their releases. But they aren’t pursuing growth for growth’s sake. Kindred noted that it reduced home health branches during 2015 from 427 to 373 sites, and hospice locations from 193 to 175. Home health revenue per branch grew 18 percent and hospice revenue per location grew 13 percent during the consolidation, the company notes.

At the Barclays conference, Brier said he didn’t expect Kindred to make any more large-scale national acquisitions, reports Business First. “We already have market presence pretty much everywhere we want to be,” he said. But small local or even regional buys are likely, observers expect.

Almost Family closed eight underperforming locations in 2015, it says.