Amedisys Inc. (Nasdaq: AMED) Chairman and CEO Paul Kusserow will officially pass the CEO baton to colleague Chris Gerard on April 15.
But the in-home care visionary who helped turn around a struggling company while simultaneously leading a major hospice expansion will remain plenty involved, as needed, he told Hospice News during an interview discussing Amedisys’ connectRN investment.
“It’s my job to make sure that the board governs the company,” Kusserow said. “The board fundamentally oversees the company, with the CEO reporting into the board. I’m going to be focused on board issues, strategic issues and that sort of thing.”
“I’ll still be quite active,” he added.
Amedisys announced the CEO transition news on Jan. 10, but the plan had been in the works for about a year. After completing several big-picture strategic priorities, including industry-shaping acquisitions such as the Contessa Health deal, Amedisys’ decision-makers recognized the provider now needed an execution pro at the helm.
And Gerard – who currently serves as president and COO – was identified as “the best leader for the company at this point,” Kusserow explained.
“I think strategically, we have a very clear direction,” he said. “What we need now, what we need to do is execute against that strategy. And Chris is, you know, probably the best ‘executer’ I’ve seen.”
If you asked him, Kusserow would probably say that one of his biggest accomplishments as Amedisys’ CEO was beefing up its leadership team and finding top-shelf executive talent. In fact, that was a main topic he touched on during a 2020 “Changemakers” conversation with Home Health Care News (HHCN).
“I’ve learned that the less I have to do with the running of the company as the CEO, the better the company actually is,” Kusserow said. “We’ve got a phenomenal team of people now. When you have good people, they’re going to take things, run with them and drive change.”
The hospice expansion – carried out through a mix of key acquisitions and solid de novo growth – is certainly up there as a chief accomplishment as well.
Around the time Kusserow joined Amedisys, the company owned and operated 80 hospice care centers, with an average daily census of 4,618. As of Sept. 30, 2021, it owned and operated177 hospice care centers, with an average daily census of over 13,000.
“It has been an incredible evolution,” Kusserow said. “I’m really glad I got to participate in the various stages of Amedisys’ development.”
Amedisys has completed at least nine hospice de novos since 2019.
Among the most notable hospice transactions under Kusserow are the 2019 purchase of Compassionate Care Hospice for $340 million and the 2020 acquisition of AseraCare Hospice for $235 million. Others include the purchases of RoseRock Healthcare and Asana Hospice.
The Baton Rouge, Louisiana-based provider has been able to source many of its deals internally, too, which has helped it strike attractive agreements during a highly competitive time for hospice M&A activity.
“We built our own proprietary M&A function that can find these assets,” Kusserow told HHCN in October 2018, shortly after the Compassionate Care Hospice agreement was announced. “We bought [Compassionate Care] way below what the market has been trading at for these assets. Hopefully this will start a trend where people are not overpaying for these things because some of the prices that have been out there are ridiculous.”
Overall, Amedisys currently has 528 care centers in 38 states and the District of Columbia.
Along with growing its own hospice business, Kusserow has also helped advance the industry’s reputation and boost public awareness.
The same holds true for home health and home care as well.
“One of the things that I’ve spent a lot of time doing is ‘evangelizing’ for care in the home – home health and hospice, yes, but more of an aging-in-place strategy, too,” he told Hospice News. “This industry is not a little cottage industry of fee-for-service home health and hospice. We have a larger place in the ecosphere.”
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