Kansas and Missouri-based Tutera Senior Living & Health Care’s home health division will be managed by Residential Home Health, a division of Graham Healthcare Group, under a joint venture the companies announced last week.
Residential Home Health said it plans to retain all employees of Tutera’s former Continua Home Health division.
Tutera President and Chief Operating Officer Randy Bloom in a statement said that the joint venture “makes us stronger and improves our ability to support patients at every stage of care with tailored treatment plans carried out by dedicated professionals.”
Home health, he added, will continue to be an important part of Tutera’s continuum of care.
“Over the course of the last couple of years, we’ve determined that it’s challenging for a lot of reasons to operate these kinds of agencies,” Bloom told the McKnight’s Business Daily. He cited staffing shortages as one such challenge.
Bloom said that Tutera had been approached previously by outside organizations wanting to purchase its home health division.
“We declined an outright purchase because we do feel like it is a very necessary piece and continues to be a very necessary piece of our overall continuum,” he said. “We wanted to maintain the quality and be involved in those kinds of things.”
The management agreement with Graham Healthcare Group seemed like the best option for Tutera, Bloom said.
“We didn’t make our decision lightly as far as who we wanted to be in association with, and we spoke to a number of individuals that had an interest in doing this with us,” he said. “Ultimately, we chose Graham because we felt like it was a good fit with the principles of that company, in terms of what their goals were and the outcomes for the residents. And they have a very clear history of success in providing excellent care in the various states where they operate.”
