Business Briefs: Amedisys Closes Infinity HomeCare Acquisition, Alacare’s New CFO

Amedisys Closes Infinity HomeCare Acquisition

Baton Rouge, Louisiana-based Amedisys, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMED), one of the largest home health and hospice providers in the country, announced it closed the previously announced acquisition of Infinity HomeCare for $63 million in cash on Dec. 31.

“By coming together, Amedisys and Infinity HomeCare will form Florida’s premier home health company – with a focus on empowering our employees to continue delivering outstanding, high-quality patient care and partnering with the providers and communities we serve,” said Amedisys President and CEO Paul Kusserow in a prepared statement.

Infinity HomeCare, based in Sarasota, Florida, cares for over 14,000 patients a year and has more than 600 employees with 15 care centers in Florida. Infinity generates about $50 million in annual revenues and was previously controlled by the principals at HealthEdge Investment Partners, LLC.

Livingstone, a Chicago-based investment bank, advised HealthEdge Investment Partners and Infinity HomeCare on the sale.

AmeriHealth Caritas Iowa Signs Provider Contract with UnityPoint Health To Serve Iowa’s Medicaid Population

AmeriHealth Caritas Iowa, a Medicaid managed care health plan that is set to serve Iowa Medicaid beneficiaries as part of the state’s new IA Health Link program starting March 1, 2016, announced that it has signed a deal with UnityPoint Health that will provide AmeriHealth Caritas Iowa’s members access to UnityPoint Health’s home care experts, hospitals, primary care doctors and specialists across Iowa and the Illinois Quad Cities.

UnityPoint Health is one of Iowa’s largest providers of home health, hospital, telehealth and other health care services. It includes more than 3,500 physicians and specialists, eight hospitals and clinics in Cedar Rapids, Des Moines, Dubuque, Fort Dodge, Anamosa, Quad Cities, Muscatine, Sioux City and Waterloo in Iowa, as well as Peoria, Illinois, and Madison, Wisconsin.

The new IA Health Link program is set to serve most of Iowa’s Medicaid population, or approximately 560,000 Iowans, via select managed care plans.

Alacare Home Health and Hospice Names Corrie Hall as New CFO

Alacare Home Health and Hospice named Corrie Hall as its new chief financial officer.

Hall is set to replace Gene Sykes, who announced he plans to retire after more than 20 years with the company.

Before joining Alacare, Hall worked as chief operating officer at Kare-In-Home Health in Gulfport, Mississippi, for 10 years and worked at Hattiesburg’s South Mississippi Home Health for 27 years. Hall previously served on the board of directors of the Mississippi Association of Home Care.

Visiting Nurse Association of Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky Sells Northern Kentucky Assets

The Visiting Nurse Association of Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky has sold the two licenses for its home health care operations in Kentucky, though it is expected to keep offering some nursing services in the state.

The Cincinnati, Ohio-based Visiting Nurse Association sold its Medicare certification for skilled services in Kentucky, as well as its state certificate of need for non-skilled private duty services, to Lafayette, Louisiana-based LHC Group Inc. (NASDAQ: LHCG). Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

“We’ll continue to provide private duty services in Kentucky, but not the Medicare services,” Visiting Nurse Association of Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky CEO Valerie Landell said. “We will continue to work with (LHC Group) as a partner and subcontract staff.”

“We have about 350 private duty or non-skilled clients in Northern Kentucky, and there were less than 20 patients that transferred to LHC under the skilled side,” Landell added. “It was a very small part of what we do.”

The Visiting Nurse Association had intended to offer hospice care in Northern Kentucky, but the nonprofit was unable to secure a Kentucky certificate of need for hospice care.

“We’ve decided to really focus our care coordination and continuum of care in Ohio,” Landell said of the Visiting Nurse Association, which serves about 1,500 patients daily and has approximately 186 employees in Ohio.

ABILITY Network Acquires OCS HomeCare Division From National Research Corporation

ABILITY Network, a leading health care technology company based in Minneapolis, has bought the OCS HomeCare and Hospice analytics division from National Research Corporation (NASDAQ: NRCIA) and (NASDAQ: NRCIB). Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

ABILITY acquired the OCS analytics software services that provide clinical outcomes improvement, hospitalization insights, and quality assurance reporting and benchmarking. National Research is expected to keep the Home Health CAHPS (HHCAHPS) business of the OCS division. ABILITY and National Research have entered into an exclusive partnership to bring HHCAHPS services to the wider ABILITY customer base.

“Joining the OCS HomeCare division with ABILITY advances our team’s pioneering work with new scale and additional investments needed to succeed in the rapidly changing home health market,” said Steve Jackson, president of National Research.

ABILITY holds the industry’s leading position with hospice and home health providers, many of whom are seeking tighter alignment between revenue cycle management and clinical processes. By integrating the ABILITY | OPTIMIZE OASIS service with the OCS analytics and reporting capabilities, ABILITY is expected to provide the leading solution to the home health and hospice market.

OCS homecare products are designed to serve as solutions for patient and staff experience measurement, hospitalization insights, and clinical outcomes improvement. ABILITY is expected to continue the yearly OCS HomeCare Elite awards recognizing the country’s top agencies.

Medicalodges to Pay $50,000 for County In-Home Health, Home Health Services

Clay County Commissioners in Kansas made a deal to sell the county’s Home Health and In-Home Health Services to Medicalodges for $50,000 and to lease space at the Clay County Health Department to Medicalodges for $32,000 per year for three years.

Written by Mary Kate Nelson