Lines of separation throughout the continuum of care continue to disappear as the post-acute care industry seeks to smooth patient transitions. Those disappearances often happen internally and on a single-system basis as well.

The Avamere Family of Companies — a large provider of senior housing, home health, hospice and other care services across the acuity spectrum — announced Wednesday that it is undergoing a major internal reorganization. The eventual goal of the reorganization, according to Avamere leadership, is to evolve into a streamlined post-acute care network for its residents and patient population.

Moving forward, the Avamere Family of Companies will work to consolidate its separate entities — senior housing and skilled nursing operator Avamere Living, therapy provider Infinity Rehab, and home health and hospice agency Signature Healthcare at Home — into more of a top-down structure. Doing so, company officials say, will break down some of the barriers among the varying levels of services, allowing residents and patients in the future to seamlessly transition from one to another without hangups.

“We need to change internally to meet the demands of a growing and transforming health care system,” Chief Operating Officer Bob Thomas said in a statement announcing the decision. “Our customers deserve a seamless experience during this process.”

Across its offerings, Avamere operates 61 communities, predominately located in Washington and Oregon, with smaller concentrations of properties in Idaho, Colorado, Nebraska, and New Mexico.

Signature Healthcare at Home is headquartered in Wilsonville, Oregon. Among its offerings, the Avamere segment provides home health, hospice and personal in-home care services, as well as palliative care and rehabilitation therapy. Mary Kofstad, APRN, MSN, is the division president of Signature Healthcare at Home.

Following the restructure, founder Rick Miller will stay on as CEO of Avamere, with each individual brand retaining its own separate consumer-facing identity. Matt Hilty will serve as executive vice president of the company’s communities division, with Brad Litle helming Avamere’s skilled nursing division.

The company will also continue to have a separate leader — Nicolette Merino — for its new Ovation brand of so-called “micro-CCRCs,” or continuing care retirement communities without the skilled nursing offering that has long defined the full-service sites of senior care and living. Ovation last month announced the development of two such properties in Utah and Nebraska, set to open in 2020, that will offer skilled care to residents either through its own affiliates or select nearby third parties.

“When you look at national skilled nursing occupancies over the past 10 years, they’re not going up, right? A lot of [skilled nursing residents] are being sent to assisted living instead,” Chief Development Officer Ryan Haller told Skilled Nursing News, a sister newsroom to Home Health Care News, in February. “At the end of the day, we think we’re just addressing what the population is doing.”

Written by Alex Spanko