24 Hour Home Care has acquired the New Mexico-based home care company Inteli-Care, which will allow the former to broaden the types of patients it can care for.
At Home Health Care News’ Home Care Conference in November, 24 Hour Home Care President and co-founder Ryan Iwamoto talked about some of the contemporary pressures in home care. Those included rising cost of services – anywhere from 20% to 40% in given markets, he said – which changed the company’s strategy to taking care of a “small population of people and doing it really well.”
But 24 Hour Home Care is still a mission-driven organization that wants to serve as many people as possible in the home. Acquiring Inteli-Care – which focuses on the Medicaid population in New Mexico – will allow it to do so.
“We’ve always been on the private-pay senior care side, but that population is getting smaller and smaller based on who can afford it on a long-term basis,” Iwamoto told Home Health Care News. “We’ve always wanted to get into the Medicaid world. … So now, being able to expand our footprint into New Mexico and serve this population, it really does [fit in] with our why of just impacting more lives at a greater scale. And not just on the private-pay side or the IDD side, but with people that really need it on the underserved Medicaid side.”
The Los Angeles-based 24 Hour Home Care offers home care and intellectual and developmental disability (IDD) services across California and Arizona. Inteli-Care will allow 24 Hour Home Care to serve patients in yet another state, adding 500 clients to its overall network.
TEAM Public Choices – a portfolio company backed by Alpine Investors – acquired 24 Hour Home Care last year. Overall, TEAM now has 10 brands under its network, serving more than 40,000 clients via 60,000 caregivers nationwide.
Officially, 24 Hour Home Care dubs its relationship with TEAM as a partnership, as it will with Inteli-Care as well. While 24 Hour Home Care and Inteli-Care will now both be underneath the TEAM umbrella, Inteli-Care will operate under the guidance of the leadership team at 24 Hour Home Care. Inteli-Care’s founder, Onesimo “Mo” Vigil, will continue to lead his business alongside his wife.
“Really, the reason I did it was because I like the people,” Vigil told HHCN. “We mesh because we have the same philosophy on impacting people’s lives, right? That’s what they want to do. And that’s what they’ve done. They’ve just done it at a much bigger scale. But they’re people first and all about their employees. They’re also all about creating opportunity. Those are just all the things that I’m very interested in. Plus, I think they are just a little bigger risk takers than me. That’s how they’ve grown in scale a lot faster than me, where I’ve kind of just stayed in my lane.”
Founded in 2003, Inteli-Care has four locations within its network – in Albuquerque, Santa Rosa, Socorro and Santa Fe, New Mexico. The company also offers an option for its clients to select their own caregivers.
The two parties worked with each other for a year and a half before officially getting a deal done. At first, Vigil wasn’t sure about the idea of a partnership or acquisition, but in the end, the possibilities made it seem worth it.
For instance, the ability to take what has made Inteli-Care successful thus far, and have the backing and capital to spread it further throughout New Mexico and other states, is an extremely exciting proposition for Vigil.
“It’s super exciting,” Vigil said. “I’m now able to open up those conversations and deal with that kind of stuff now that I’ve got support, resources and backing. And it’s the kind of backing you’d want. That’s what is important. I can’t wait to see where we’re going to be in the next three or four years.”
Iwamoto and Vigil are hopeful that Inteli-Care will grow significantly in the next few years, both through organic growth and also acquisition. Having been in the New Mexico market for nearly two decades, Vigil said he knows there’s need out there that hasn’t been satisfied.
As for the nature of how the deal came together, 24 Hour Home Care and Inteli-Care have synergies that made Vigil more comfortable with the deal. Both were not looking for financial backing at first necessarily, but eventually fell into the hands of a partner they felt could advance their businesses.
“We didn’t necessarily need to do the deal either,” Iwamoto said, referring to the TEAM deal. “But I think some of the advantages that came with it allowed us to live on our wider mission at a greater scale. And I think it’s the same for [Vigil], it’s just having a chance to do more. I can tell you this, I’m more excited today than when I was when I first started at 24 Hour Home Care. And that I think says a lot for an entrepreneur, because typically you don’t have that same excitement as the business gets bigger and bigger, but I truly feel that way.”
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