Choice Health at Home has acquired Alpha Home Health and Hospice, further increasing the company’s Oklahoma footprint. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Alpha provides home health and hospice services through five locations in Ada, Ardmore, Oklahoma City, Norman and Pauls Valley.
Meanwhile, Tyler, Texas-based Choice is home health, hospice and rehabilitation services provider. The company operates in 40 total locations across Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma, with over 800 licensed health care employees.
The acquisition marks Choice’s third purchase in Oklahoma this year, and fourth overall of 2021. The company also recently purchased Oklahoma-based Angelic Hospice and Restore Home Health.
Alpha gives the company a stronger foothold in the state, according to David Jackson, CEO of Choice.
“We are excited about Alpha because it gives us the eastern side of the Tulsa and Oklahoma City markets, in concert with Restore Home Health and Angelic Hospice in the greater Shawnee area,” Jackson told Home Health Care News sister site Hospice News. “Alpha really gives us the Interstate 35 corridor from Oklahoma City to the Texas state border. This provides a really robust footprint in Oklahoma.”
Alpha was also an attractive acquisition asset because of the company’s balance when it comes to revenue mix. Approximately 50% of its revenue is from home health and 50% is from hospice, according to Jackson.
The combined Alpha, Restore and Angelic deals will put Choice’s patient census in Oklahoma at roughly 10,000 by the end of this year, up from 7,200.
Plus, the deal allows Choice to leverage multiple service lines.
“In concert with what we’re doing with Restore and Angelic we felt like we had a real opportunity to provide that full continuum [of care],” Jackson said. “We saw this as a way to advance that.”
Jackson also stressed that the organization’s staff and leadership team was another major selling point.
Along these lines, Alpha CEO Carl Ganter will remain an executive for Choice’s Oklahoma operations with the title vice president of business operations.
“We were really excited about the people involved in the transaction as well as what amounts to 11 new service sites,” Jackson said. “Carl and his team combined bring close to 100 years of experience to the table. Welcoming them is imperative to build a great organization and stay poised for future success and growth.
Ultimately, balancing “mission and margin” has been at the forefront of Choice’s acquisition strategy, according to Jackson.
While Choice has a slight home health lean, the company is looking to pursue acquisition opportunities for both services lines. In terms of geographic growth, Choices is focused on increasing its Southwestern presence moving forward.
“We have some exciting developments in New Mexico that we expect to really take form in August,” Jackson said. “We continue to see really strong trends in organic growth in our Texas operations. In Oklahoma, the first two quarters of the year have been much more than we could have hoped for and expected. We will continue to be very inquisitive on the M&A front while also fostering that organic growth.”
Private equity firm Coltala Holdings acquired a stake in Choice at the end of June. Among its reasons for investing, the PE firm was attracted by Choice’s veteran leadership team and strong track record, Coltala President and co-founder Edward Crawford previously told HHCN.
“They’ve scaled very quickly, they built a finance team, and they’ve really hired some incredible people,” Crawford said. “When we first met Choice, they were in the low double digits for offices. And now they have 40 offices with 800 employees in three different states. And so the fact that they’ve been able to hire the right people and scale this quickly has been great to see.”
Additional reporting by Jim Parker.
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