Help at Home, one of the largest home care providers in the country, is expanding its reach in the state of Florida through its acquisition of Caregiver Services Inc.

“When we evaluate any organization for a possible acquisition, it’s important for us to have a cultural connection with that company,” Ray Smithberger, chief operating officer of Help at Home, told Home Health Care News. “CSI knows what it takes to be an employer that can cultivate a compassionate care workforce, and they’re also focused on providing high-quality care and being a trusted partner with the state of Florida and their payers in the communities they serve.” 

Caring Services (CSI), headquartered in Miami, has provided support services for over 40 years to clients in communities across Florida.

Through the acquisition, Help at Home will manage home care services in these communities, primarily made up of Medicaid and private-pay populations in 49 counties. CSI has branch locations in West Palm Beach, Palm City, Daytona Beach, Palm Bay, Summerfield, Miami, Coral Springs, Clearwater, Tampa, Fort Meyers, Sarasota and Winter Park.

Help at Home now operates in nine of the 11 managed long-term services and supports (MLTSS) regions in Florida.

“All of this combined creates a strong foundation for our organizations to serve more individuals, focusing on connecting home care to health care,” Smithberger said.

Founded over 50 years ago in Chicago, Help at Home’s portfolio spans the Midwest, the South and the East Coast. Florida has been a state where the company has had a high priority for expansion, according to Smithberger.

“It’s a managed long-term services state,” he said. “Help at Home has successfully worked with regional and national partners in other states to improve health outcomes. We viewed the acquisition of CSI as a meaningful step to help us further expand our goals for more people in the state of Florida.”

Smithberger said that CSI will continue to operate under its current name as the company develops a branding strategy. However, they will likely move to the Help at Home name in the future.

The current CSI leadership team will remain in place.

“With any company we acquire, we take best practices; we focus on how we can help more people live with independence and dignity in their homes,” Smithberger said. “CSI brought a strong culture of caring for clients, and we’re looking forward to enhancing that by introducing things like our on-all-the-time recruiting model, which allows us to hire 4,000 caregivers a month across the markets we serve. Then, we’ll introduce our 24/7 support model to ensure clients and caregivers get the support they need when they need it.”

With this acquisition, Help at Home added approximately 1,300 caregivers and 1,500 clients to its already 60,000 caregivers and 70,000 clients in 11 states and over 200 locations.

“We’ve been focused on advancing the delivery of home care beyond organic and inorganic growth with a transformational journey that’s been focused on the dually eligible population,” he said. “While we’re a home- and community-based service organization, we have the infrastructure and have been building capabilities to manage population health.”

Smithberger added that, as an organization, Help at Home will continue to expand its capabilities to nurture the client-caregiver relationship and focus on its growth strategy, including further expansion in other markets where the company is rooted, as well as expansion in new states.

“Our ultimate goal of connecting home care to health care is focused on our ability to do more for more,” Smithberger said. “We’ll continue to expand in our core markets and new markets like Florida to position ourselves with managed care organizations as a provider of choice.”