Home Health & Hospice Week

Deals involving hospice and/or Texas prove popular in latest round.

As market pressures persist and demand for home and hospice care continues to increase, it’s no surprise that mergers, acquisitions, and other deals continue to proceed despite pandemic-related uncertainty.

For example: Two different Visiting Nurse Association mergers are occurring in Connecticut.

In one, Bethel VNA, New Milford Visiting Nurse & Hospice, and RVNAhealth plan to merge their three organi­zations by the end of the year, they say in a release. The merged agency, which will operate under the RVNA name from its Ridgefield headquarters, will serve Fairfield, Litchfield, and New Haven counties.

“As the COVID-19 pandemic made abundantly clear, pooling our collective talent and resources will allow us to invest deeply in the technologies and services that our communities need to thrive, and that we as agencies need to effectively respond to future health challenges,” RVNA CEO Theresa Santoro says. All three agencies were formed in the early 1900s.

In another, VNA Northwest in Bantam, Foothills Visiting Nurse & Home Care in Winsted, and Salisbury VNA have merged to form Visiting Nurse & Hospice of Litchfield County.

“All three agencies have been caring for the residents of northwest Connecticut independently for a century or more,” says executive director Michael Caselas in a release. “By working together, Visiting Nurse & Hospice of Litchfield County is even better equipped to provide the local, personalized services our families, neighbors, friends and we ourselves want.”

As is often the case, Texas deals have dominated the latest M&A activity:

• Irvine, California-based Jet Health Inc. has acquired Carrington Hospice Care Inc., an Arlington, Texas-based hospice company serving the Dallas-Forth Worth market. Jet Health operates in Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, and Idaho, it says in a release. “This acquisition affords Jet Health the opportunity to better service both our patients and referral sources in the Texas marketplace and to continue to grow Jet Health’s hospice offering throughout our geographic footprint,” Jet Health CEO Stacie Bratcher says in the release. Jet Health was founded in 2016 and Carrington in 2018.
• Cornerstone Healthcare parent the Pennant Group Inc. has acquired the assets of CMS Home Health Care, with locations in Brownwood and Coleman, Texas, the Eagle, Idaho-based chain says in a release. “This off-market acquisition is an excellent strategic fit for our burgeoning Texas portfolio of home health and hospice operations,” Pennant CEO Danny Walker says in the release.
• Private equity firm Actinium Healthcare Holdings has acquired Houston-based Central Home Health Services of Texas Inc. Actinium’s “mission in this transaction was to buy a platform company in the healthcare arena, and then do follow up add-ons to create a large healthcare agency with significant value,” says M&A advisory firm Generational Equity, which advised CHHS in the matter.
• Texoma Medical Center in Denison has acquired Northeast Medical Center Home Health and began operating as TMC Home Health-Bonham on Sept. 1.

But there were plenty of other deals in other parts of the country in recent weeks too:

In Utah: Salt Lake City-based Bristol Hospice, a portfolio company of Webster Equity Partners, has acquired Remita Health in the states of Arizona, California, and Nevada, the hospice provider says. That adds the Remita hospice locations of Orange County, Northern Los Angeles, Central Los Angeles, Inland Empire, Las Vegas and Tucson. Bristol now operates 35 locations across 10 states, and this deal is its ninth acquisition this year and fourteenth acquisition in partnership with Webster Equity, it says.

In Minnesota: Dallas-based AccentCare INC. and Fairview Health Services in Minneapolis are forming a new post-acute business in which Fairview will retain a 20 percent stake, AccentCare says in a release. The company will be Fairview’s preferred provider for home health and hospice services. “The deal resembles similar arrangements forged by AccentCare in recent years with UCLA Health, Asante, Baylor Scott & White, and other leading health systems,” the company says.

In Ohio: Ohio Living Home Health & Hospice has formed a “strategic partnership” with Good Shepherd Home in Fostoria to form Partners in Care. The partnership “will allow Ohio Living to expand its hospice services more comprehensively throughout Hancock, Sandusky and Seneca Counties,” Ohio Living says in a release.

In South Dakota: Mandan-based Dakota Home Care has opened a new location, its second, in Fargo, the six-year-old home care agency says in a release. Home care is “a safe and reliable alternative to nursing home placement,” the agency notes.

In Iowa: The Jasper County Board of Health voted in a Sept. 17 meeting to ax its home care program, citing high costs, reports the Newton Daily News. The move came after some heated public meetings about eliminating the program, according to the newspaper.