New Day Healthcare LLC recently secured a $125 million senior credit facility with First Citizens Bank. That capital access will support the company’s acquisition pipeline in home health, hospice and personal care.

Part of the funds will be utilized to complete the acquisition of four facilities, as well as several other transactions under consideration, according to CEO and Founder G. Scott Herman. New Day Healthcare is majority owned by the private equity firm Kaltroco.

Hospice is a cornerstone of New Day’s strategic focus. To date, the company has integrated 11 acquisitions into its pipeline, four of which have involved hospice assets.

“This financing supports New Day’s growth strategy as we expand our offerings to better serve communities across the United States,” Herman said in a statement shared with Hospice News. “This acquisition of four facilities in key regions enhances our strong portfolio and advances our mission of delivering comprehensive, patient-centered care in various post-acute settings.”

Texas-based New Day launched in 2020 and offers hospice, home health and personal care through several brands, as well as pediatric services and clinical decision support. The company serves nearly 120,000 patients annually across 30 locations in Illinois, Kansas, Missouri and Texas.

New Day’s three-pronged merger and acquisition approach hinges on culture, quality and clinical excellence. The company seeks out assets with similar organizational cultures to its own, as well as companies with solid compliance strategies, Herman said.

The company’s most recent acquisition came earlier this month with the purchase of Intrepid USA’s hospice operations in Missouri and in its home state. The transaction expands the home-based service provider’s existing presence in those markets and includes Intrepid’s hospice assets in Joplin and Springfield, Missouri, as well as its locations in Beaumont, Texas.

New Day’s de novo and acquisition strategies have predominantly focused on personal care and hospice assets that complement its home health services, Herman stated.

The company projects hospice and home health activity to increase in coming months. New Day is currently seeking to expand across its existing service region, as well as in new states.

“M&A is going to be a huge piece of our growth, and it’s because of what we’ve structured — culture benefits, data — that we’re able to continue to move forward,” Herman said. “We have a very disciplined strategy around acquisitions. We’re very bullish on the industry. Hospice acquisition playing into our home health piece is a natural transition for those patients that are heading down the path of life’s final journey.”

Employee retention efforts are a core part of building a sustainable growth pipeline, he stated. New Day has roughly 8,000 employees across its brands and offers a broad range of benefits to both part- and full-time staff. Supporting the needs of interdisciplinary and back-office staff is crucial to recruitment and retention amid growing demand for hospice and home health care, Herman said.

Technology is another key to New Day’s merger and acquisition strategy. The company leverages a comprehensive electronic medical record system to help streamline integration of newly acquired businesses. Additionally, New Day’s predictive analytics system helps to identify patterns of unmet patient needs in specific geographic regions, which in part drives strategic decisions.

Having efficient technology platforms and supportive employee benefits have helped the company’s integration processes become “smoother and much faster,” Herman said.

“[Our] data system allows us to now really begin to focus on the demographics in the areas that we serve and expand our entire continuum, which means in places where we don’t have assets that serve our patients in a longitudinal way, we’re looking to acquire them and in new states, we can establish a good, solid business and build around it,” he told Hospice News’ sister publication Home Health Care News. “Our ability to track patients that aren’t on our service and stay in contact with them and move them along when they have an incident is critical.”