Brookdale Senior Living Inc. (NYSE: BKD) is closing a Brentwood, Tennessee, satellite office near its headquarters.
In total, the closure will impact 58 jobs within Brookdale’s health care services division, which includes home health and hospice care. With its home health segment lagging behind, the company announced there would be a shake-up on a Q4 earnings call last week.
“For home health, our new leaders evaluated the best go-forward business model and executed a plan to reorganize the operations,” Steven Swain, executive vice president and CFO, said last week.
Home Health Care News sister publication Senior Housing News reported on the reorganization’s jobs impact on Monday.
Brookdale currently operates 763 owned, leased and managed senior living communities in 45 states, making it one of the biggest private-pay operators in the country.
In Q4 2019, the company’s home health segment brought in $77.4 million in resident fee revenue, a 4.4% decrease compared to $81 million in Q4 2018.
Although Brookdale will be getting rid of the 58 satellite-office jobs in Brentwood, it hopes that the affected employees will be able to take advantage of other job opportunities within the company. Brookdale has identified 42 open positions in the Nashville area that have similar skill requirements to the targeted jobs, for instance.
“Associates affected by these changes will continue working during the transition time and we expect that some will be able to move into other positions at Brookdale that match their skills and experience,” a company statement provided to Senior Housing News read.
The changes won’t begin to be put in place until April 6 and will continue in the following two weeks, according to a Feb. 20 notice with the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development.
The move is reportedly part of an effort to downsize in intake and document tracking jobs within the health care services division, while upgrading and expanding services in the field. Doing so will help the company improve overall quality of care, a representative told Senior Housing News reporters.
A shake-up shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone following Brookdale and its health care services division over the past year.
“We were disappointed with the third-quarter revenue performance of the home health business, which declined by 1% compared to the prior year,” President and CEO Lucinda Baier said during a Q3 earnings call in November.
Overall, Brookdale’s $4.06 billion, down from $4.53 billion in 2018.
Despite the home health struggle, the company posted strong numbers in hospice, which saw a near-$5 million uptick in revenue year-over-year.
“We are evaluating our cost structure and labor utilization,” the company statement stated. “As such, we will be adjusting our operations accordingly to match these goals. All of our adjustments will be done with the overall goal in mind of improving our quality of care outcomes, which will in turn improve our business prospects.”
Additional reporting by Tim Regan
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