A great place to exchange ideas and learn what others are doing in home health, hospice, and private duty home care is the Leading Home Care Network on LinkedIn. We started the network as a closed discussion group so that home care leaders could share their ideas and have open dialog without being bombarded by advertising messages. The group is only open to individuals who are currently employed by a home health agency, hospice, private duty company, or a related business.
The group has continued to grow as the discussions have become more interesting. For example, the most recent post to generate a lot of input was an article we wrote about Kindred Healthcare in Louisville making a bid to purchase Gentiva Health Service, the largest home health agency company in the country. The discussion created some thought provoking ideas.
- David said, “If that pricing is legit, every agency just went up in value”.
- Maureen said, “let us hope that they are providers of quality care! Is it good for the patient or not????”‘?”
- David said, “Looks like most of the buying and consolidating is with the Medicare agencies. Anyone seeing any sizable deals on the private duty side?”
- Tim said, “The reason you are seeing most of the M&A activity on the Medicare side is because 12,600 is too many home health providers and CMS is making it increasingly difficult to stay in business. “
- Beau said, “The market is incentivizing M&A activity. The number of agencies has increased far faster than total patient count has and there really hasn’t been a big shakeout despite the therapy refinement, outlier cap, 4 years of case mix creep adjustments, and now rebasing with additional CMC adjustments. Eventually something had to give, and I think that we saw the tipping point on January 1. “
What do you say?
Join us on the Leading Home Care Network and let your voice be heard.
