State health officials are reviewing a giant for-profit Idaho-based home health care company’s $80 million effort to buy home care and hospice companies around Oregon operated by Signature Group, also known as Avamere Health Care.
Officials in the Health Care Market Oversight office of the Oregon Health Authority announced a 30-day public comment period on Aug. 23.
Based in Eagle, a suburb of Boise, Pennant Group is a rapidly growing home health care “powerhouse” that is publicly traded. In the last 10 months the holding company’s stock price has jumped from less than $11 to nearly $35.
According to Pennant, it consists of 113 home health and hospice agencies and 54 senior living communities located in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Montana, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming. The companies operate “relatively” independently, according to Pennant.
In Oregon, Riverside Home Health & Hospice in Medford and Connected Home Health & Hospice in Portland are already part of Pennant. The company has been on a buying spree that includes recent expansions in Connecticut among other places.
Based in Wilsonville, for-profit Signature is an offshoot of Avamere, founded and led by Rick Miller.
The deal submitted to the state for its approval is split into six separate transactions. It includes the purchase of Signature’s nurse practitioner palliative care agency, known as NP2U, as well as acquisitions in five cities or regions around the state, including Bend, Eugene/Albany, Lincoln City/Oregon Coast, Medford and Tigard/Salem.
According to the NP2U application, the company is a Part B Medicare provider that has zero employees and reported revenue of more than $807,000. It operates by employee-sharing with other Signature businesses while billing for acute, primary and palliative care.
The Legislature created the Health Care Market Oversight office in 2021 to protect consumers and patients from mergers’ potential harmful effects and protect abortion access.
Since then, the program has evaluated a slew of moderate-to-major health care deals, drawing thousands of comments from people around the state.
Members of the public are being asked to comment on each of the six transactions separately. To provide a comment on any of the proposed sales to Pennant, members of the public can email [email protected], leave a voicemail at 503-945-6161, or fill out the public comment form and include the word “Signature” and the city name of the transaction you are interested in in your message. OHA will accept public comments throughout a 30-day preliminary review period, and they will be posted on the program’s website.
