Graham Healthcare Group’s announcement last week that its Residential Healthcare unit will provide home health and hospice services to newly merged Northshore-Edward-Elmhurst Health System made only a slight ripple in the home health and hospice industry. But make no mistake: This latest joint venture in Northern Illinois portends a company poised to make giant waves in the industry through agreements with hospital systems.
“We’re sort of purpose-built to provide these businesses [to hospitals].” Graham Healthcare Home Health CEO David Curtis told McKnight’s Home Care Daily Pulse. “We give them economies of scope and scale that they would not otherwise achieve on their own, just being a health system provider of these services.”
Troy, Michigan-based Graham Healthcare provides technology-driven home health and hospice services to approximately 60,000 patients a year in Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida. It has inked joint ventures with Allegheny Health Network in Pittsburgh and Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital in Lansing, Michigan. At the end of last year, the company made its first move into Florida with the acquisition of a home health firm serving the Tampa/Sarasota market. A joint venture with a Florida health system could be on the horizon. Graham Healthcare also has partnerships with physician practices for home health and hospice services.
Still, the company isn’t necessarily content to stay within the confines of the four states it currently serves.
“We’re looking for adjacencies,” Curtis explained. “We are in Southern Illinois, but not Missouri. We’re in Michigan, but not Ohio. So, that is one logical way for us to grow largely organically across state lines.”
Unique home care heritage
It might be safe to say that Graham Healthcare Group has one of the more unusual lineages in the home healthcare and hospice industry. The company became a subsidiary of Graham Holdings Company in 2012. If the name sounds vaguely familiar, it is. The Graham family owned the Washington Post for decades, with matriarch Katherine Graham leading the paper’s investigation into the Watergate scandal during the 1970s.
Graham Healthcare executives said the parent company operates without debt and has a longer time horizon than private equity firms and other investment groups. That strategy, they said, helps them invest in people and technology. Justin DeWitte, CEO of the hospice division, told McKnight’s Home Care Daily Pulse the company aims to be the employer of choice in all of its markets.
“Pay has to be competitive and the work balance has to be right,” DeWitte said. “We have to have different options for the nurse who wants to spend less time at work and we have to have options for the nurse who wants to spend a lot of time at work, but wants to be paid accordingly.”
On the technology side, Graham Healthcare is working on remote patient monitoring technology and predictive analytics, which can forecast patient outcomes based on history. The company is also working to develop an app that will connect patients with their caregivers.
“Largely, we’re talking to patients over the phone and I don’t think that is the 2022 model for most industries,” Curtis said.
