SolutionHealth and Home Health & Hospice Care to Merge Post-Acute Operations

SolutionHealth and Home Health & Hospice Care (HHHC) are merging to expand access to post-acute care services across the southern New Hampshire communities, including hospice care. Financial terms of the transaction are yet to be determined pending satisfactory completion of final due diligence and regulatory approval. Both companies expect the affiliation to complete later this year.

SolutionHealth is the parent organization of the Elliot Health System and Southern New Hampshire Health. The pending affiliation with HHHC would include its inpatient facility, the Community Hospice House, and bring the provider alongside the health system and its subsidiaries to develop a fully-integrated, regionally-coordinated system of post-acute care. Following the affiliation, HHHC will retain its name, board of trustees, community connections and fundraising activities while remaining independently licensed as a nonprofit charitable health care organization.

The move to combine services is part of a larger plan to increase patient access to high-quality post acute care while controlling costs for providers and patients alike, a goal the provider couldn’t have otherwise accomplished without the collaboration, according to SolutionHealth President and CEO Sherry Hausmann.

“Our goal is to provide a comprehensive suite of services to ensure access to high-quality post-acute care throughout southern New Hampshire,” said Hausmann. “We could not have done this independently. HHHC is a true leader in post-acute care and we are honored to be partnering with them to provide these important services to our community.”

Nonprofits in particular have been gaining speed in collaborations nationwide, with a growing number merging or becoming affiliated in regional collaborations to maintain and improve their ability to compete in an increasingly crowded hospice space.

More than 1,000 health care providers and 6,500 staff comprise SolutionHealth’s integrated health system. Founded by Southern New Hampshire Health and Elliot Health System, the nonprofit organization focuses on providing primary and specialty care to more than half a million residents in its service area throughout the southern region of New Hampshire bordering Massachusetts.

Demographic tailwinds have been fueling rising demand for end-of-life and serious illness care in the Granite State. Seniors 65 and older account for 18.7% of New Hampshire’s overall population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, which estimated that adults over the age of 60 would make up 26.3% by 2030.

The state’s hospice utilization among Medicare decedents reached 47.7% in 2018, just under the national average of 50.7% that year, according to the National Hospice & Palliative Care Organization. By the following year in 2019, the number of decedents enrolled in hospice reached roughly 51% nationwide, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MEDPAC).

Along with expanding care and reaching a growing aging population, the affiliation will increase clinical specialty sophistication, boost population health care offerings and improve clinical and operational efficiency. A goal of the affiliation is to improve care innovation and control costs while also improving patient outcomes and family experiences of care.

“We believe that the combined expertise between HHHC and SolutionHealth will improve patient experience and health care outcomes,” said John Getts, HHHC president and CEO. “Sharing a common health care record platform will also help to coordinate care and lead to greater patient satisfaction. We remain committed to the meaningful relationships that we have developed with all health care providers, and will continue to work collaboratively to best serve patients in southern New Hampshire.”

In addition to providing facility- and home-based hospice, HHHC also offers home health, nursing, rehabilitation, therapies and medical social work services to 25 communities in southern New Hampshire, including Nashua, Derry, Salem and Merrimack.

A growing trend toward advanced care outside of the acute setting has been advancing for years, according to a recent statement from SolutionHealth, with the pandemic only accelerated the move driving an increase in innovations and demand for care in the home.

Roughly 50%, or nearly half, of home- and community-based palliative care is delivered by hospice providers, according to the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC).