Home Health & Hospice Week

Plus: Will Encompass Health’s HH and hospice spin-off become a sale instead?

The 140-year-old Visiting Nurses Association of Albany has become a member of Albany Med Health System.

“We are close partners in the care plans we develop, and our core service areas fit perfectly together,” says Albany Med Health System CEO and physician Dennis McKenna in a release from the VNA and health system. “By joining forces, we are redoubling our shared commitment to quality, coordinated care along a patient’s entire journey of healing, wherever they may be,” McKenna notes.

“This partnership will strengthen the collaboration of clinical expertise with each System hospital to promote a smooth transition of clinical services to the home setting with efficiency, consistency, and highly skilled expertise,” VNA of Albany CEO and RN Susan Larman says in the release.

VNA of Albany has 125 staff and its licensed affiliate, Visiting Nurses Home Care, has about 650 workers, the VNA says on its website. They serve 18 counties. Albany Med Health System includes four hospitals.

Other mergers and acquisitions include:

In Alabama: Encompass Health Corp.’s home health and hospice spin-off might actually become a sale of the Enhabit Home Health & Hospice business unit, the company now says. Encompass “continues to expect to complete the separation of Enhabit in the first half of 2022 via a spin-off,” the Birmingham-based chain says in a release. “However, as Encompass Health proceeds with the separation process, our Board and management will assess any value-creating strategic opportunities and remain open to value-maximizing alternatives, including a sale or merger of Enhabit.”

In Kentucky: Kindred at Home will become a name of the past, as Humana Inc. transitions its KAH home health agencies to its newly launched CenterWell Home Health brand. Humana announced the acquisition of KAH and creation of CenterWell last April. The name change is starting in eight states now, with “other locations transitioning later this year,” Humana says in a release.

In North Carolina: Amedisys Inc. has agreed to acquire certain home health assets from AssistedCare Home Health Inc. and RH Homecare Services LLC, doing business as AssistedCare Home Health and AssistedCare of the Carolinas, respectively, the Baton Rouge, Louisiana-based chain says in a release. The AssistedCare companies serve more than 450 home health patients daily with about 100 employees in Leland and Snow Hill. Amedisys is not purchasing AssistedCare’s personal care, private duty, or other business lines.

In California: Continuing care retirement community O’Connor Woods in Stockton is partnering with Hospice of San Joaquin to “offer the services of a full-time Hospice of San Joaquin nurse on the community’s campus,” it says. “This individual will be available on-site to provide dedicated, professional end-of-life care to O’Connor Woods residents,” the community says in a release.

In South Dakota: Midwest chain St. Croix Hospice is entering its ninth state with a new location in Sioux Falls, the company says in a release.

In Maryland: Maxim Healthcare Group based in Co­lumbia has separated its two business units into independently operated companies — Maxim Healthcare Services for home health and Maxim Healthcare Staffing — and will retire the umbrella Maxim Healthcare Group brand, the company says in a release.

In Rhode Island: CVS Health Corp. has home health on the brain, judging from the Woonsocket-based company’s most recent earnings call. “Consumers are a major force driving change in healthcare, and we continue to engage successfully with individuals in more places and on their terms — virtually, in the home, and in their local community,” said CVS Health CEO Karen Lynch in the call last month. And when asked by a stock analyst whether CVS is looking at additional services like Medicare home care, CFO Shawn Guertin said “Yes, absolutely things that ... extend … the care continuum … particularly to a Medicare population would make a lot of sense.”