Amedisys Inc. (Nasdaq: AMED) saw hospice revenue-per-day and costs-per-day both rise during the second quarter of the year.

The company released its Q2 results on Wednesday with no associated conference call. Amedisys is in the process of being acquired by the insurance giant UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH), which has been gummed up by legal and regulatory hurdles.

Amedisys saw its hospice revenue-per-day rise 4.1% in Q2, coupled with a 2.9% increase in cost-per-day. The company also saw a 0.4% increase in admissions and a 1.3% jump in average daily census.

On a consolidated basis, Amedisys earned $621 million in net service revenue during Q2, up from $591.2 million year over year. Its hospice segment brought in $215 million, up from $204 million in the prior year’s quarter.

Amedisys offers home health, hospice and palliative care, among other services to more than 465,000 patients annually across 38 states and Washington D.C.

The UnitedHealth Group subsidiary Optum, in June 2023 inked its agreement to acquire Amedisys in an all-cash transaction of $101 per share, or about $3.3 billion. Last summer, the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) began investigating potential antitrust concerns related to the deal.

Amedisys and UnitedHealth Group are now embroiled in a lawsuit by the DOJ. The agency seeks to block the pending acquisition due to antitrust concerns. The DOJ’s impetus behind the lawsuit against Optum and Amedisys is multi-faceted, citing potential adverse impacts on competition, home-based care workers and payers.

The DOJ performed a similar investigation — and filed a lawsuit — when Optum acquired the health care technology company Change Healthcare. A federal court eventually allowed that deal to proceed.

To ameliorate some of the DOJ’s concerns, Amedisys plans to sell a number of its care centers to Adoration Home Health Acquisitions, LLC, Adoration Hospice Care Acquisitions, LLC, and Senescence, LLC, DBA All Saints Hospice. These three companies are all affiliates of BrightSpring Health Services (Nasdaq: BTSG).

The home health and hospice provider also intends to sell some home health locations to Cornerstone Healthcare, Inc. and Tensaw River Healthcare, LLC, affiliates of The Pennant Group (Nasdaq: PNTG).

“We view the divestiture package as positive and believe [BrightSpring] and [Pennant] are two viable buyers that should satisfy the DOJ,” Brian Tanquilut, an equity analyst at Jefferies, indicated in a note shared with Hospice News.