The home-based care provider Compassus has established a joint venture with the health system Providence.

Through the JV, Compassus will assume management of Providence’s home-based care business lines, with each company owning a 50% stake. Services offered through the JV will include hospice, palliative care, home health and private duty nursing, branded as Providence at Home with Compassus.

“Serving people in their home, many of whom are at their most vulnerable, is sacred work and a deeply held part of the Providence mission. As our communities age, we have been thoughtfully evaluating how to best meet the growing need for these services,” Terri Warren, Providence’s chief of community services, said in a statement. “Compassus shares our commitment to these services and will enable us to expand access to care in the comfort of home.”

The JV includes 24 home health locations in four states, as well as 17 hospice and palliative care locations in Alaska, California, Oregon, Texas and Washington state. It will offer private duty services in southern California.

Compassus, a portfolio company of the private equity firm Towerbrook Capital Partners and the health system Ascension Health, provides home health, home infusion, palliative and hospice care across 30 states. The home-based provider also offers advanced care management and skilled nursing facility-at-home services. Compassus’ 7,000 employees care for more than 120,000 patients annually.

​​The company in recent years has made JVs with health systems a cornerstone of its growth strategy. Compassus in September finalized a similar partnership with Ohio Health.

The organization also recently entered a joint venture with Bon Secours Mercy Health (BSMH), which serves home health and hospice patients in Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Ohio, South Carolina and Virginia. Compassus also expanded last October through its JV with Ascension Health, branded as Ascension at Home.

Additionally, Compassus and VNS Health in June 2023 formed a value-based collaboration aimed at improving access, awareness and quality of hospice and palliative care services. The two home-based care organizations joined forces in a Medicare Advantage (MA) Value-Based Insurance Design (VBID) model partnership.

“As Compassus is growing in some markets thanks to health system footprints across the United States, we’re being assets with these joint ventures as we come together with the hospital programs,” Compassus CEO Michael J. Asselta recently told Hospice News. “We think that our alignment with health systems gives us a different, and maybe a little more interesting, view of what the opportunity is with home care, both with hospice and palliative care, [and] home health and home infusion, all part of our strategies with these JVs. And there will be more, so this is indeed a strategy that Compassus is pressing into.”