This story was reported and written by VPM News.
Bon Secours Mercy Health’s home health and hospice care division is teaming up with national home health care provider Compassus as part of a newly minted partnership.
The home health and hospice program will now be called Bon Secours Home Care and Hospice by Compassus.
Before the integration, Bon Secours was the nation’s fifth-largest Catholic health care system. The faith-based nonprofit has operated in the Richmond and Hampton Roads areas for more than 40 years. The merger will also impact BSMH locations in Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Ohio and South Carolina.
Compassus is a Tennessee-based health care provider operated by private equity firm TowerBrook Capital Partners. In 2019, Compassus merged with Ascension, then the largest nonprofit Catholic home health care provider in the US.
Bon Secours’ mission includes “alleviating human suffering and bringing people to wholeness in the midst of pain and loss.” Its Richmond hospice — established with the help of a fund created in 1982 — is the area’s only faith-based nonprofit hospice program.
Bon Secours COO Don Kline said he hopes the new partnership will help expand home health care services across the community.
“We recognize the changing health care landscape and the desire of more patients to have flexible care options, including care in the home,” Kline said. “Bon Secours Mercy Health is proud to provide patients and families with comprehensive care for every stage of life.”
Hospice care — an effort to ease pain and care for people who were dying — began as a service provided through churches and community members.
Marcia Tetterton, executive director of the Virginia Association for Home Care and Hospice, said she’s seen a “tremendous amount of consolidation” across Virginia over the past 15 years.
“It’s not unique to the Richmond area,” Tetterton said. “The hospitals will do either some sort of joint merger or some sort of management type of agreement with organizations like Compassus that have a larger footprint across the country.”
She added that “the jury is still out” on whether the partnership would impact the quality of care, but emphasized the importance of a hospital’s financial viability to provide consistent, reliable care.
“If you don’t have a margin, you don’t have a mission,” Tetterton said.
By 2030, nearly one-quarter of the commonwealth’s residents will be over the age of 60, according to the Virginia Department on Aging and Rehabilitative Services . Last year, nearly 40,000 patients received hospice care in the state according to the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
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