Compassus Leans Into Embedded Health System Partnerships To Power Home Health Strategy

Home health and hospice provider Compassus is evaluating a broad array of growth opportunities, including de novo expansion, acquisitions and joint ventures.

The company has expanded rapidly through acquisitions and will continue to do so, according to Chris Core, Compassus’ senior vice president and chief growth officer. Its joint venture strategy emphasizes integrated care coordination with health system partners. 

“Efficiency from hospital discharge to [the] right post-acute follow-up, whether that’s hospice or home health or palliative, is really, really critical,” Core told Home Health Care News’ sister publication, Hospice News. “We found being in a joint venture relationship allows us to just deliver outsized value on behalf of that health system and servicing their local community.”

Brentwood, Tennessee-based Compassus provides home health, home infusion, palliative and hospice services, among other in-home offerings. The TowerBrook Capital Partners-backed company employs over 10,000 people and operates in 33 states

An integrated approach is especially critical in Compassus’ value-based enterprise model, Core said. In this model, Compassus’ teams are embedded directly alongside the health system’s case management team. This helps identify patients who may require post-acute follow-up as early as possible and coordinate their discharge to appropriate community-based care.

The approach connects patients with the provider best positioned to meet their needs, Core said.

Provider education is another component of Compassus’ strategy to help patients receive the full value of home health services, Core said. He described providers as being under more pressure to see more patients and do more with less, with Compassus stepping in to educate providers on the benefits of home health and hospice. Compassus also works to make it as easy as possible for referring providers to refer patients to home health and hospice and for patients to begin receiving care promptly.

Growth potential and support for fraud measures

Compassus has an active pipeline of growth opportunities, including de novos, M&A and joint ventures, Core said.

De novo growth is limited under the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) moratoria on home health and hospice Medicare enrollment. Core said Compassus is operating under the belief that the company will expand via each of these levers.

The six-month moratoria took effect May 13 and are scheduled to run through Nov. 13 unless CMS extends them. The restrictions also cover new home health branches and hospice practice locations, as well as certain ownership changes that require initial enrollment.

Compassus fully supports the moratoria as part of CMS’ efforts to strengthen program integrity nationwide, Core said.

“Every provider committed to acting ethically, responsibly and in the best interest of patients should support any kind of temporary measure that’s going to help get us to that place where there’s a cleaner operating space,” Core said.

From a growth perspective, Compassus is highly selective about potential new partners, according to Core. The company is focusing on maximizing growth potential with the right partners in the right geographies, he said, as it prioritizes its growth pipeline. Clinical quality and alignment on growth strategy are central to that selection process.

Still, the home health and hospice industries are highly fragmented, and many providers could benefit from the increased scale and resources that come with a partnership with Compassus.

Holly Vossel, senior reporter for Hospice News, contributed reporting to this story. 

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