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Ananth Mohan, who has served as Elara Caring’s chief operating officer since 2021, stepped into the role of CEO last month.
With Mohan at the helm, Elara Caring has set its sights on enhancing high-acuity care in the home, achieving a seamless patient experience across the company’s multiple services lines and driving further innovation.
Strengthening Elara Caring’s high-acuity care delivery remains a strategic priority, as the company continues to see patients that have increasingly complex needs, according to Mohan.
“We lean into that with every one of our service lines,” he told Home Health Care News. “We are the company that our partners trust, and we meet the challenges head on, with skill and compassion.”
Elara Caring is one of the largest home-based care providers in the U.S. The Dallas-based company has roughly 200 locations across seven states and serves over 60,000 patients. The company’s service lines include home health, hospice, personal care, behavioral health, palliative care and more.
Elara Caring’s focus on high-acuity care delivery dovetails with its goal to cultivate a more integrated patient care experience across its many services lines.
“We believe in the continuum of care … ElaraConnect is our wraparound for that,” Mohan said. “A seamless patient experience across the different care types and levels of care is very much who we are. That will continue to be a big focus of investment for us.”
Over the years, Elara Caring has been part of a cohort of companies that have strategically positioned their organizations as a home-based care one-stop-shop.
Innovation is also top of mind for Mohan, especially when it comes to AI-adoption. Last year, Elara Caring began utilizing Apricot, a generative AI platform, to help clinicians manage documentation.
Last year, the company also partnered with Constant Therapy Health to deliver AI-enabled speech-language and cognitive therapy.
“For us, the point of technology and AI is to enable more patient and caregiver time,” Mohan said. “That’s the purpose. We will deploy technology towards anything we can remove to increase that.”
Mohan confirmed that Elara Caring is also exploring other use cases for AI-tools at the company. However, he was quick to explain that the company isn’t implementing technology for its own sake.
“Ultimately for us, it’s not about technology,” Mohan said. “It’s about the technology enabling the care we provide. We will pilot, we’ll evolve, we’ll adapt. It’s got to prove out in our delivery of care. That’s the goal. We’ll be cautious to scale anything until we can prove the value.”
Value-based care, M&A and challenges ahead
When factoring Elara Caring’s goals around high-acuity care, technological innovation and creating a more integrated patient care experience, value-based care falls in line with these priorities.
One of the ways the company has positioned itself for value-based care success is by investing in virtual primary care options via Teladoc Health.
Along with the rest of the home health industry, Elara Caring is also engaging with value-based care through the Home Health Value-Based Purchasing (HHVBP) model. In the past, Elara Caring noted that HHVBP allowed the company to learn more about what was working at its various locations and what wasn’t.
“If you think about the components, quality metrics with an addition of hospitalization and outcomes, and then with a patient satisfaction component, it is who we want to be, and it’s aligned with the value-based care future,” Mohan said. “It’s a learning muscle for our industry, but we think it’s a really good one.”
Aside from its value-based care focus, Elara Caring is also navigating the same operational and financial pain points as its industry peers.
One of these key challenges is the recently announced 2026 home health proposed payment rule. The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’s (CMS) proposal includes a 6.4% aggregate cut to home health payments, a projected $1.135 billion decrease compared to 2025.
“We are reeling from the rate announcement here,” Mohan said. “I think that on the rate and regulatory side, it is continuing to recognize the value home health brings to the total cost of care. Ultimately, that’s what matters.”
Since the proposed rule has been released, industry leaders and advocacy groups have been vocal about the ways in which cuts continue to limit access to care. Many have also been critical of CMS budget neutrality methodology. Mohan has also joined his industry peers in pushing back.
“When you look at how the calculation of the margin analysis, the budget neutrality, all of the reasons for this sort of justify the rate cut, we’re sort of ignoring flaws in the calculation,” he said.
Looking ahead, Elara Caring is focused on accelerating the company’s growth. The company is bullish on M&A as a means to drive growth.
“I see that increasingly in our future,” Mohan said. “We’ve done a handful of acquisitions in the last 18 months, after a period of not doing so much. There will be a number of smaller agencies that will see the benefit in joining our platform, so we see opportunity.”
Ultimately, Mohan believes that all of the experience he gained as Elara Caring’s COO has prepared him for this next chapter.
“The role of COO helped me build deep, strong relationships across the company and with the leaders,” he said. “They’re the heroes behind everything we achieve. As I think about our transformation to where we are, I’ve had a hand in shaping most of our initiatives to get to the Elara we are today. I had a front row seat to Scott Powers, who has been a great partner and mentor to me over the last four years as well. I couldn’t have asked for a better environment to step into this role.”
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