Home Health & Hospice Week

Affiliations seem to be gaining popularity.

Unreliable reimbursement and ever-increasing regulatory scrutiny don’t seem to be dampening the home care and hospice M&A market much.

Check out these recent mergers, acquisitions and other deals:

• Barnabas Health, New Jersey’s largest hospital system, and the Visiting Nurse Association Health Group are partnering up, reports the NJBIZ business journal. Barnabas opted to grow its home care operations via the joint venture rather than acquisitions, an exec told the newspaper.

Barnabas Health Home Care and Hospice has about 600 employees serving about 1,600 home care patients daily and 400 hospice patients daily, it says. VNA Health Group serves about 7,000 home care patients and more than 1,500 hospice patients daily.

The joint venture, expected to be finalized within a year, will use the agencies’ existing names — Barnabas Health Home Care and Hospice in northern New Jersey, and VNA of Central Jersey from Middlesex to the southern region of the state, the journal says.

• Brooks Rehabilitation’s home care division will soon become Brooks AmeriCare Home Health with the acquisition of the large agency serving 23 counties in Northeast and Central Florida, reports the Jacksonville Business Journal. Both companies are based in Jacksonville. Brooks Rehab, which has the larger administrative structure, will absorb AmeriCare Home Health and its assets for undisclosed terms.

• The Visiting Nurse Association of Porter County has agreed to sell its home health care program to Porter Health Care System Home Health in Valparaiso, Ind., reports The Times of Northwest Indiana. “The landscape of healthcare has changed so dramatically,” a VNA exec said in explaining the deal. The VNA will retain its hospice business line and facility.

• Cornerstone Healthcare Inc., The En-sign Group Inc.’s home health and hospice portfolio subsidiary, has acquired Managed Care at Home, a Medicare and Medi-Cal certified home health agency serving the San Jose area from an office in Milpitas, Calif., the company says. With the acquisition, Cornerstone now owns 10 home health and hospice operations, four home health-only operations, two hospice-only operations, and three private duty homecare operations in nine western states.

• NorthCare Hospice & Palliative Care is merging with Kansas City Hospice & Palliative Care, reports the Kansas City Business Journal. NorthCare Hospice will keep its name and operate as a division of Kansas City Hospice in the Northland. NorthCare has 130 employees, a 16-bed facility, and serves 1,000 families a year. KC Hospice has 250 employees, a 32-bed facility, and serves 2,500 families a year, according to the newspaper.

• Hospice By The Bay — formerly Hospice of Marin — has affiliated with the University of California, San Francisco, reports the Marin Independent Journal. The Larkspur-based agency continues to operate as an autonomous nonprofit and will lay off none of its 308 employees as a result of the alliance, the newspaper says.

Hospice By The Bay hopes the affiliation will improve its geographic reach. “The dynamics of hospice right now are such that you really want to maximize your economies of scale so you can financially survive over the next five years,” board member Gerald Peters told the newspaper. “It would be ideal if we could expand geographically.”

• Woodland Hospice Morey Bereavement Center in Mt. Pleasant, Mich., intends to affiliate with MidMichigan Health, reports The Gladwin County Record & Beaverton Clarion. MidMichigan will run Woodland’s day-to-day operations, while Woodland continues to own and maintain its eight-bed facility. Hospice of Central Michigan built the facility in 2008, according to the newspaper.