The labor pressures in the hospice community are straining clinical operations, but the issue is also becoming a more pressing concern when it comes to mergers and acquisitions. Buyers, in fact, are paying much closer attention to workplace culture and human resources as they select acquisition targets. Hospice M&A has been exploding in recent years […]
BrightSpring Health Services
Hospice providers and patients are having difficulty procuring medications due to nationwide drug shortages, threatening quality of care and patients’ access to hospice. These include essential drugs for pain and symptom management. The scope of the shortages seems to be widening. Slightly more than 240 medications were in short supply at the close of Q1 […]
Industry consolidation has been robust in the hospice space, with deal volume and valuations outpacing other health care industry sectors. Most of these transactions involve one for-profit company buying another. However, more instances are cropping up in which a for-profit agency purchases a nonprofit hospice. While individual nonprofits have grown in recent years, in aggregate […]
The workforce shortage plaguing the health care sector is continuing to interfere with hospices’ ability to grow. Most recently, North Carolina-based provider Amorem has temporarily consolidated its inpatient care services to a single facility, temporarily closing its two other units. Amorem was born through the merger of Burke Hospice & Palliative Care and Caldwell Hospice […]
This year was transformational for the hospice space. The industry took its first steps towards value-based payment through the hospice component of the value-based insurance design model, or Medicare Advantage hospice carve-in. Providers also saw an overhaul of the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) survey process, all while contending with COVID-19 headwinds […]
An Iowa hospice provider is closing its inpatient hospice house as of Dec. 31 due to the industry-wide staffing shortage. The organization will continue to provide care in patient homes, skilled nursing and assisted living facilities. The name of the organization is simply, “Hospice,” which serves Davis and Wapello Counties in the southeast portion of […]
BrightSpring Health Services is pursuing an initial public offering (IPO) and expects to begin trading on the NASDAQ. The company, which does not yet have a stock symbol, seeks to raise $100 million through the IPO. BrightSpring is a home and community-based health care services platform. The company entered the hospice space in February with […]
Brightspring Health Services has announced the acquisition of Dare County Home Health and Hospice in North Carolina. Dare County officials told Hospice News that the sale price was $2.9 million following a round of bidding that began last year. Four companies bid on the home health and hospice agency for amounts ranging from $200,000 to […]
Worsening workforce shortages have been keeping hospice leaders awake at night for several years running. Rising turnover due to the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the crisis, and some hospice providers and health systems are starting to shut down their programs or sell off their operations because they cannot recruit or retain a sufficient number of […]
While hospices have been focusing efforts to recruit, retain and rebuild their ranks during a financially choppy time, some providers are furrowing their brows over minimum wage increases in the absence of a corresponding raise to Medicare reimbursement. While federal efforts to boost the minimum wage have stagnated for the time being, action is underway […]