New Day Healthcare LLC is prioritizing hospice growth in its strategic plans as the home-based care company focuses on improving quality for patients across the care continuum.

Texas-based New Day launched in 2020 by a group of former hospice and home health professionals. The organization offers hospice, home health and personal care through several brands.

New Day’s three-pronged merger and acquisition approach hinges on culture, quality and clinical excellence, according to CEO and Founder G. Scott Herman. Quality is perhaps the most important driver in a transaction consideration, Herman stated.

“We have a very disciplined strategy around acquisitions. We don’t buy top shelf, and we don’t buy train wrecks,” Herman told Hospice News’ sister publication Home Health Care News. “We have three key matches when we do an acquisition. The first is culture. If our culture is aligned, then we move on to compliance. [Hospice], is a tough industry. Nobody’s going to be perfectly clean on compliance, but if you don’t have a clear path to clear compliance issues, we walk away. Then we get engaged with clinical and finance. That discipline has helped us pick really good companies and buy good performers and improve on them.”

In addition to hospice, home health and personal care, New Day also provides pediatric services and clinical decision support. The company serves nearly 120,000 patients annually across 30 locations in Illinois, Kansas, Missouri and Texas.

To date, New Day has integrated 11 acquisitions into its pipeline, four of which have involved hospice assets. De novo growth is also central to its strategic plans, with the company projecting home health and hospice activity to ramp up in the near term, Herman indicated. Much of its de novo activity has come in the form of new home health locations in Texas, he said.

Interlinking hospice with home health growth is a key to reaching patients further upstream and providing seamless care transitions that improve patient experience, Herman indicated. The company anticipates that hospice will be a large part of its strategic focus.

Leveraging technology such as predictive analytics and streamlined electronic medical record systems is also key, Herman stated. New Day’s EMR platform spans 17 different patient data systems, which allows the company to understand where the largest areas of underserved patients with unmet needs exist.

“The M&A is going to be a huge piece of our growth, and it’s because of what we’ve structured – culture, benefits, data [analytics] – that we’re able to continue to move forward,” said Herman. “Our hospice programs are a continuation, for the most part, of patients who are chronically ill with declining health care conditions often coming out of our home health operations. So, a hospice acquisition playing into our home health piece is a natural transition for those patients heading down the path of life’s final journey.”

The organization’s most recent acquisition came earlier this month with the purchase of Intrepid USA’s hospice operations in Missouri and Texas for an undisclosed amount. The transaction expanded New Day’s existing presence in those markets and included Intrepid’s hospice assets in Joplin and Springfield, Missouri, as well as its locations in Beaumont, Texas.

Aside from its geographical service region, Intrepid’s organizational culture and senior leadership teams were among the considerations fueling the transaction, according to Herman.

“We chose to engage in that process because we have active hospice assets in those two states,” he said. “Our ability to bring on great team members from Intrepid and integrate them into our existing culture and our existing continuum was a great fit for us. We knew they were great people doing great things in the communities that we also serve, and it’s just a great opportunity to roll them all in.”

In addition to Intrepid USA, other brands under the New Day’s umbrella include Phoenix Home Care & Hospice, New Age Hospice, Home Care Providers of Texas, Pathfinder Home Health, Envision Health Partners and AssistCare, among others. Compassion Hospice also joined the company’s ranks when New Day acquired the organization in January, expanding its geographic footprint across all four states in its existing service region.

Retaining the branding of newly acquired assets is an important part of fostering both existing reputations for quality care delivery and building sustainable growth, said Herman.

Looking ahead, the company has penned letters of intent for several more potential hospice transactions, he stated. Hospice and personal care assets represent its “predominant, primary acquisition targets,” Herman said.

Heman has described the company’s approach to innovation and growth using the motto, “Burn the ships.”

“When we formed New Day it was to ‘burn the ships’ and do things differently, think about how we manage patients in a longitudinal way and not just across episodes, moments in time or incidents,” Herman said. “In order to do that, we had to have a full care continuum in the markets we serve. In order for us to manage those people by their illness and to manage those people across years, not just in incidents, we need to have companies and assets in place that allow that care to happen and transition seamlessly.”