The Pennant Group’s (Nasdaq: PTNG) acquisition of home health and hospice agencies divested as part of UnitedHealth Group’s (NYSE: UNH) acquisition of Amedisys is slated to close within the first few weeks of October.
With the closing of the deal, Pennant is “primed” to strengthen its southeast footprint, crafting a presence there similar to the company’s presence in the Pacific Northwest and California, company leaders said on a panel at the 2025 Jefferies Healthcare Services Conference on Monday.
“With this large acquisition opportunity, we can build a service center to support our operations in the southeast,” Brent Guerisoli, CEO of Pennant, said. “With these new agencies in Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia, a shared services arrangement and then a service center here, we’re really primed, over time, to continue to expand in the southeast.”
Pennant agreed to acquire between $113 million and $147 million worth of home health and hospice agencies divested by UnitedHealth and Amedisys.
Guerisoli expressed confidence in the Amedisys/UnitedHealth acquisition due to its experience in acquiring Signature Healthcare at Home assets last year.
“[The Signature deal] was similar, a little bit smaller platform, but the same thing,” Guerisoli said. “There was a good performing operation in the Pacific Northwest, multiple leaders that were strong, and so we were able to go out there, bring them into the fold of our operations, inject the culture and create the opportunities for those local leaders. We’ve been really pleased with the performance out of the gate with Signature. We expect something very similar to take place here in the Southeast.”
Pennant’s acquisition strategy focuses on investing in C-suite leaders, which enables it to differentiate its operations at the community level and drive organic growth, according to Chief Operating Officer John Gochnour.
“This is a great portfolio – there are strong operating operators and strong assets – but we think we’ve got a lot of value to add by bringing our innovative operating model,” Gochnour said about the Amedisys/UnitedHealth acquisition. “There are parts of this portfolio that we see have real opportunity for upside, just in getting them to our typical performance, but we also see it as an opportunity for growth. We really believe that our opportunity lies in differentiating ourselves in each of these local communities by putting the right leadership in place, or training and developing existing leaders.”
Pennant is “pretty agnostic” to which service lines it invests in, Guerisoli said, whether it be home health, hospice or senior living. The company focuses on attractive opportunities with potential acquisition targets that have strong leaders in place. The company’s acquisition strategy involves a peer accountability and cluster model, Brian Mills, vice president of acquisitions, recently said at Home Health Care News’ FUTURE conference.
The company’s agnosticism and a belief that reimbursement rates are cyclical are why Pennant did not step away from the Amedisys/UnitedHealth acquisition after the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced its proposed home health payment rule for 2026, Gochnour said.
While its overall service line approach is agnostic, the company does aim to increasingly invest in personal care and private duty care. Currently, the company has six operations with stand-alone private duty services and another five that offer private-duty services as part of its overall offerings.
“We have found we’ve got a lot of opportunity on the private duty side,” Gochnour said. “We think it’s an important part of the continuum of care. We think that it adds significant value because of the touches it gives us with our patients. It’s an area that we have developed leaders, and there’s a group forming that we expect to use the organization’s dollars to invest and grow.”
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