Mission Healthcare has acquired Loma Linda University Medical Center Home Health in Southern California.
Loma Linda University Medical Center Home Health is a part of Loma Linda University Health, which includes eight professional schools, six hospitals and a network of more than 900 faculty physicians.
Meanwhile, San Diego, California-based Mission Healthcare is one of the largest regional providers of home health, hospice and palliative care. The company — backed by Chicago-based PE firm The Vistria Group — has 14 offices across the Golden State.
Currently, Mission Healthcare serves more than 2,200 patients daily.
Mission Healthcare’s acquisition of Loma Linda University Medical Center Home Health has its roots in a previous partnership between the two organizations. The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
“We believe our combined resources will make an impactful patient experience and benefit the community by delivering care to a broader population,” Paul VerHoeve, Mission Healthcare’s CEO, said in a statement.
This deal comes on the heels of Mission Healthcare’s larger push to expand outside of the SoCal region.
Last month, Mission Healthcare purchased Alliance Home Health & Hospice Care, a Medicare-certified home health and hospice organization in Pleasanton. The deal allowed the company to expand its footprint into Northern California for the first time.
Mission Healthcare is also looking at acquisition opportunities in other West Coast states.
In March, the company confirmed that it was doing due diligence on two opportunities. One of these deals would further increase its California footprint and the other gives the organization a multi-state presence, according to VerHoeve.
“There’s a lot more uniqueness within the Western states,” he previously told Home Health Care News. “We’ve got some very attractive acquisitions that we feel confident we’re going to be able to get to the finish line in the next 60 to 90 days.”
Aside from its M&A pipeline, Mission Healthcare is also focused on its palliative care service lines.
“We found that [palliative care] was very beneficial, in particular, to institutional acute care hospitals, who were struggling with folks who maybe didn’t qualify for home health or didn’t want to choose hospice, but kind of fell in between,” VerHoeve said during the HHCN PDGM Summit in March. “We feel like that’s an area that will continue to evolve.”
VerHoeve noted that palliative care fits in nicely with Mission Healthcare’s overarching strategy of home health and hospice.
Still, VerHoeve expressed the need for reimbursement in regard to providing these services.
“We’re hopeful more reimbursement models will come out that are feasible for those services to be more readily available,” he said. “I think [palliative care] is an unmet need, and honestly, there are folks who are high risk going without having these services.”
Looking ahead, Mission Healthcare also plans to turn its attention to chronic disease management programs.
“We have not been heavy on those in the past, [but] I think we’ll continue to develop those and try to align with our health systems as well as our payers,” VerHoeve said. “It’s something they’ve been asking for quite some time. We’re out here in California, a very heavy managed care state, so it won’t be unfamiliar to us.”
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