Home Health Business Briefs: EHR Tech Provider Acquires HomecareCRM

As one of the fastest-growing sectors in the United States, home health care is teeming with business activity. Here are some of the industry’s latest investments, acquisitions and partnerships: 

Remote Monitoring Company Partners With Arcadia Home Care & Staffing 

Healthsense, Inc., a provider of aging services technology, announced recently its partnership with Arcadia Home Care & Staffing, a national provider of home care and staffing services with locations in 12 states.

Arcadia, based in Southfield, Mich., offers home care services to help individuals live longer in their own homes. Arcadia has selected Healthsense’s remote monitoring system to help further its mission of creating sustained independence and decreased impact of illness, injury and aging through better client engagement.

It will offer the program under the “Arcadia On Call” brand.

The Healthsense remote monitoring system provides actionable health information through the collection of sensor data based on activities of daily living (ADL), such as sleep quality, movement, eating, and other wellness indicators.

The sensors, placed throughout an individual’s home, establish normal activity levels for each client based on their typical daily patterns. Using Healthsense proprietary algorithms, the system detects significant behavior deviations which are often early indicators of acute illness or exacerbations of chronic conditions.

Arcadia On Call nurses will monitor home care clients’ ADL patterns to help them and their family members manage current and emerging health conditions.

“With a rapidly aging population, the shrinking pool of caregivers, and the increased cost of urgent, emergent and acute care, innovative products are needed to identify and prevent changes in health status earlier,” said John Elliott, Arcadia Home Care president and CEO. “Arcadia On Call now provides that solution.”

Patient Home Monitoring Corp. to Acquire West Home Health Care

Patient Home Monitoring Corp. (PHM), a company focused on rolling up annuity-based health care service companies in the U.S. and Canada, announced it has executed a binding purchase agreement for the acquisition of West Home Health Care, a Virginia-based company focused on providing home-based health care services, including mobility solutions for the home.

The acquisition is expected to immediately increase revenues by more than 10% and adjusted EBITDA by more than 5%, before factoring in organic growth, for a total acquisition price of less than 1% of the total common shares outstanding. The acquisition is expected to have an immediate and positive impact on earnings-per-share (EPS).

For many years, the company has served tens of thousands of patients in Virginia offering home accessibility products and services, including bath safety and patient lifts.

As patients become immobile, they require more than a power mobility wheelchair. They also need home modifications to assist with their chronic conditions. According to PHM, this is an additional product line of services for patients with mobility-related conditions and has cross-sell potential with PHM’s patients in South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Maine and New Hampshire, and when closed, Colorado, Texas and Oklahoma.

PHM also expects to generate post-acquisition organic growth by offering pulmonology and cardiology services and products to patients in Virginia.

West generated more than $5 million in revenue for the 2014 calendar year with approximately $600,000 in adjusted EBITDA over the same period, based upon management’s unaudited due diligence.

When West’s unaudited trailing 12-month figures are combined with PHM’s annualized revenues from February 2015, PHM is expected to generate: over $55 million in annual run-rate revenue; over $10 million in annual run-rate adjusted EBITDA; and significant new organic growth cross-selling opportunities designed to generate additional revenue and profit growth.

Under the terms of the Definitive Purchase Agreement, PHM will acquire 100% of the stock of West Home Health Care. PHM will issue 2,345,000 shares of common stock of PHM valued at $1.35, or less than 1% of the fully diluted shares. The total consideration is $3,165,750.

“This is a highly accretive deal for PHM, expected to increase profits more than 5% for less than 1% of our total shares,” said Michael Dalsin, chairman of PHM. “The team is highly focused on integrating this company into the PHM culture and increasing revenues and profits.”

Home Health Company Working Its Way Into Florida

Omaha, Nebraska-based Right at Home, which offers in-home care services, is working its way into the Florida market, where the organization currently has just 14 locations out of its 400 worldwide, according to local reports. 

“Florida for us is one of our target markets,” Eric Little, senior vice president of Franchise Development, told The St. Augustine Record. 

Little noted that his market analysis shows St. Johns County, in particular, has about 34,000 residents who are 65 or older out of a total population of around 200,000.

In the last three years, Right at Home has added 175 franchises because of the aging population and because of changes in health care, the Record reports.

Greystone Acquires Autumn Health Care Facilities in Central Ohio

Tampa, Florida-based Greystone Healthcare Management Corp. continues to grow its network of health care facilities, home health agencies and hospice care services in Florida and Ohio with the acquisition from Autumn Health Care of its 10 skilled nursing facilities, with a total of 614 beds, in the central Ohio area.

The acquisition includes existing therapy provider TheraTrust, Inc. and a corporate office located in Newark, Ohio, that will be maintained as a regional headquarters.

These facilities offer rehabilitation and skilled nursing care in the following communities: Adena, Cambridge, Coshocton, Mount Vernon, two facilities in Newark, Somerset, Thornville, Walnut Grove and Zanesville.

“These central Ohio facilities truly solidify our presence in the state, and demonstrate our commitment to growth in the region,” said Connie Bessler, CEO of Greystone Healthcare Management. “Each of these new locations offers state of the art amenities and services, featuring a well-constructed and unique ‘Main Street’ design. We are eager to expand our network and offer our new communities the Greystone difference in patient-centered care,” 

The 10 skilled nursing communities join Greystone’s existing locations in Ohio, including The Rehabilitation and Health Center of Gahanna in Columbus, home health services provider, Executive Care, and Greystone Hospice of Ohio in providing quality patient care and customer service.

Acquisition of HomecareCRM Leads SigmaCare to Roll Out Integrated Marketing Solution  

SigmaCare, a leading electronic health record (EHR) technology partner for long-term and post-acute care, senior living, home health and hospice providers, recently announced it has launched its integrated marketing solution through the acquisition of HomecareCRM.

The marketing solution, focused on referral source management, enables providers to perform competitive market analysis, easily locate the highest value referral sources by leveraging analytics, streamline marketing efforts and optimize census.

Integration with the SigmaCare EHR platform expedites the admissions process by facilitating patient transitions into provider organizations and enables providers to inform referral sources of patient status and outcomes, adding value to the relationship.

“Our technology offers the most robust local health care market intelligence available and will provide SigmaCare customers with an added value solution that offers a level of insight into referral networks not available in any other solution,” said Chris Tunnell, senior vice president of HomecareCRM. “By joining SigmaCare and integrating with its advanced EHR platform and intuitive technology, the partnership will help providers manage critical information while driving census growth across the complete lifecycle of resident care from pre-admission through discharge.”

Nizhoni Health Systems Streamlines Operations With Comcast Business

Comcast Business recently announced that Nizhoni Health Systems, a large home health care agency in Massachusetts, has selected its Ethernet and phone services to streamline operations by connecting its 11 locations across the state on one network. As the organization transitions from paper to electronic medical records (EMRs), the Ethernet services will allow for sensitive information to be securely transferred between offices and other health care agencies.

“Security is paramount in health care and other industry regulations, so we looked to Comcast Business and Security7 Networks, an internetworking and security systems integrator, to give us the ability to separate our voice, video and data traffic to keep everything secure,” said Jim Graham, chief information officer of Nizhoni Health Systems. “EMRs are larger and take longer to transfer than a simple email, and as our physicians and partner organizations increasingly interact via voice and video, we needed a network that gave us sufficient capacity with the flexibility to scale up quickly whenever needed.”

As a certified home health agency providing medical, mental, behavioral, physical and occupational health services to clients across eight counties in Massachusetts, Nizhoni Health Systems’ more than 1,000 employees split their time across the organization’s 11 office locations to complete paperwork, update records and collaborate with other healthcare professionals on patient care.

Prior to the implementation of Comcast Business Ethernet, nurses were often frustrated by slow Internet access and network performance due to having a mix of different network providers and services over outdated networks at various sites, according to the organization.

Nizhoni Health Systems now has Comcast Business Ethernet Network Service with connections ranging from 20 up to 100 Megabits-per-second (Mbps) across all 11 of its locations, which allows all sites to easily share files, interact with each other and connect to the organization’s two data centers. 

Written by Emily Study