Home Health & Hospice Week

Plus: CenterWell snaps up Florida chain from PE firm.

One of the nation’s largest home health chains is merging with home infusion powerhouse Option Care Inc.

Amedisys Inc. and Option Care “have entered into a definitive merger agreement to combine in an all-stock transaction that values Amedisys at approximately $3.6 billion, including the assumption of net debt,” they say in a release. Upon closing, Option Care stockholders will own about 64.5 percent of the combined company, and Amedisys stockholders will own about 35.5 percent.

Baton Rouge-based Amedisys comes into the merger with 16,500 employees in 522 locations across 37 states and the District of Columbia. Bannockburn, Ill.-based Option Care boasts over 7,500 employees in all 50 states.

“The combined company will have a scaled national platform empowered to move deeper into a value-based care model,” according to the release. The combined company generated revenues of about $6.2 billion in 2022, it says.

In after-hours trading the day of the announcement, Option Care stock was down about 17 percent, while Amedisys stock was up about 4 percent, reports Seeking Alpha.

Other recent deals include:

In Florida: Private investment firm Kinderhook Industries has sold West Palm Beach-based Trilogy Home Healthcare to CenterWell Home Health for undisclosed terms, they say in a release. Founded in 2016, Trilogy has 11 locations in the state. CenterWell was formerly Kindred at Home before being acquired by Humana Inc. for $8.1 billion in 2021.

In Kansas: Midwest chain St. Croix Hospice has opened a new location in Manhattan, the Oakdale, Minnesota-based company says in a release. St. Croix has 60 branches in 10 states, it says.

In Iowa: St. Croix also has opened a new location in the adjoining state of Iowa. The office is the chain’s fourteenth in the state, it says. “Healthcare providers have been closing their doors across rural America, and Iowa is no exception,” says St. Croix Statewide Executive Director Kim Kirschbaum in a release. “With fewer facilities and agencies to care for our aging population at the end of life, it is critical that agencies like ours step up to fill those gaps when we can.” The chain services “83 primarily rural counties” in the state, and about 4,000 patients daily throughout its service area, it says.

In Pennsylvania: Oakland, California-based Kaiser Permanente is launching Risant Health, which will acquire Danville-based Geisinger Health, they say in a release. Risant is a nonprofit that aims “to expand and accelerate the adoption of value-based care in diverse, multi-payer, multi-provider, community-based health system environments,” according to the release. “Health systems that become part of Risant Health will continue to operate as regional or community-based health systems … while gaining expertise, resources, and support through Risant Health’s value-based platform,” they say.

In Tennessee: Covenant Health system has established a hospital-at-home program called Covenant Health Advanced Care at Home, it says in a release on its website. The program is in collaboration with Medically Home Group Inc. and Global Medical Response, and runs out of the system’s Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center in Knoxville. Covenant hopes to expand it to all its East Tennessee hospitals by the end of the year, it says. “EMS professionals with advanced training as community paramedics are the primary liaisons for daily in-person visits to patients,” according to the release.