Michigan-based Centrica Care Navigators has affiliated with the NorthStar Care Community, which also operates Hospice of Michigan and Arbor Hospice. Financial terms were undisclosed.

Post-transaction, the combined nonprofit organization will care for more than 1,800 hospice patients across 60 Michigan counties, as well as nearly 900 palliative care patients, making it one of the largest nonprofit operators in the United States, according to Kelly McCormick, CEO of Centrica.

With this addition, NorthStar Care Community will now employ more than 1,000 individuals and utilize more than 600 volunteers throughout the state of Michigan.

“We have decided to come together. We’ve been neighbors and good friends for a long time, and we decided to leverage that and combine all of our strengths,” McCormick told Hospice News. “We decided to take organizations that are fiscally, operationally and clinically strong, and then build something even better, really to preserve nonprofits not only in the state of Michigan, but that nonprofit presence in the nation.”

Centrica and Northstar have been long-time collaborators on multiple initiatives. Because their footprints were adjacent to each other with no overlap, they did not consider each other to be competitors, McCormick said.

Centrica will not rebrand, and three of the company’s executives will transition to NorthStar. This includes McCormick, who will serve as chief clinical excellence officer, marketing and branding officer Denise King and Centrica COO Paul Gray, who will be working in a strategy capacity.

In addition to clinical care Northstar provides support to other hospice providers nationwide, such as IT services, assistance with electronic medical records, triage and aid to employees.

The affiliation will put NorthStar on stronger footing relative to its competitors in the for-profit and nonprofit sectors, according to CEO Patrick Miller.

“We started talking with [Centrica] over a year ago. They’re just a solid organization. By doing something like this, coming together into a larger organization, that creates that much more stability, economies of scale opportunities for expanded work,” Miller told Hospice News. “So it was natural that we develop the relationship. We saw how alike we are from a cultural perspective and from a service, mission perspective.”