Strange Tony,
Gentiva CEO David Causby is targeting palliative care for service expansion. He plans to take a low volume, loss leader program and turn it into 10,000 palliative care patients through a focused effort. It would have to include increasing reimbursement for palliative care for that strategy to make sense.
Aveanna Healthcare took a similar approach to pediatric home services for medically complex patients. Former CEO Tony Strange, a former boss of David Causby's, lobbied state legislatures for increased reimbursement for that service. Aveanna's current CEO Jeff Shaner was a peer of Causby's, or should I say rival?
The U.S. Senate set up a committee to explore the impact of private equity ownership on healthcare. Aveanna had Bain Capital as a sponsor. Bain remains the majority shareholder for Aveanna. Shaner may have his work cut out for him in refinancing Aveanna's billions in debt.
Gentiva is majority owned by Clayton, Dubilier and Rice and had two other financial rapscallion owners in TPG and Welsh, Carson, Anderson and Stowe.
Senators asked Gentiva for information in 2021 but nothing has come from that inquiry to date. WCAS, TPG and Humana already decimated our once nationally ranked hospice by 2021. It has only gotten worse. Regulators may finally pay attention to the damage done by financial rapscallions.
Aveanna was rated a "sell" and given a $1.50 price target by UBS. Their report cited the company's high leverage. I imagine Gentiva is in a similar position.
Causby's goal is to increase the value of his equity holdings by several orders of magnitude. I've seen the harm his greed caused at the local hospice level. He and his financial rapscallion sponsors remain unchecked and for that we suffer.
Anonymous
