After just over a year in the business, most home-based care companies would still be trying to find their footing.

PurposeCare, on the other hand, is operating on solid ground – with a very clear mission on what it’s working toward as a company. The provider is making moves to build an integrated care model that will demonstrate the ability to care for Medicare-Medicaid dual eligibles, while also embracing value-based care.

Backed by the health care-focused private equity firm Lorient Capital, PurposeCare delivers both clinical and non-clinical home-based care. The provider dramatically grew in size last fall, when it acquired Purpose Home Health, Alliance Home Health Services, A1 Home Health Care and A1 Nursing Care, along with Newsome Home Health Care and Honor Home Health.

Other acquisitions have since followed.

Home Health Care News recently caught up with PurposeCare CEO Rich Keller to learn more about the company’s M&A strategy and value-based care vision.

HHCN: In March, PurposeCare acquired the St. Joseph, Michigan-based Home Sweet Home In-Home Care. What are your growth plans for PurposeCare this year, and how big of a factor will M&A continue to play in that?

Keller: M&A is a very material fact. Right now, our strategy, quite frankly, is to purchase Medicaid lives where we can, and build Medicare where we can.

Our business is about providing a home-based care continuum for people who are dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid. The idea is to bring the care to them when they need it.

What’s an overlooked area of home care or home health that not enough people are talking about?

For us, I kind of view [home care and home health] together because figuring out how to integrate these two services is sort of our business.

What’s the overlooked aspect of what we do? I don’t think that folks appreciate the role that the caregiver plays on the front-line delivery system. I think it’s safe to say that the caregiver as a key contributor on a health care team is, for the most part, unrecognized in the broader health care delivery system. I think the caregiver’s role in being able to drive health outcomes, partly by being an identifier of changing conditions.

What is one creative way PurposeCare has been able to solve some of the persistent challenges that we see, either on the home care side or on the home health side?

This is a big M&A play for us. We’ve only been at this for barely 15 months. It’s been running pretty fast and hard, trying to bring companies together and integrate them. Doing that requires alignment of systems and culture.

The thing we’re trying to solve for – and I know we’re making progress on it – is how do we provide that integrated delivery platform?

It’s all about integration of care. We see a change in condition, we identify that change of condition, and we make a clean handoff to somebody who can do something about it.

At the end of the day, when we look back on progress in 24 months, I hope to talk more about the big things we did. I would say it’s going to be getting to that coordinated model, through care integration, systems integration and cultural integration. That’s going to be our true value proposition and the differentiator.

On the personal care side, how important is payer diversification versus going all-in on private pay, for instance?

That’s a tough question, because with Medicaid, if you’ve seen one state, you’ve seen one state.

It really depends on the payers themselves. I would say the diversity for us is more about the numbers — as in being in a number of states. There is wax and wane on state budgets. I think one way to hedge our business is to have a decent footprint, so that we’re not at the whim of one particular state budget.

How important is value-based care for your company, in general?

We’re tremendously interested in value-based care. The point of our business is to create a delivery system that is rewarded for value. Most of our payer contracts, most of our clients are not PPS. We have a significant managed care penetration. Having said that, we’re focused on star ratings across the board. Driving favorable results on value-based payment on home health care is obviously a core focus of ours. I think it aligns well with our ability to demonstrate value overall.

Is there anything on your legislative wishlist?

How do we fund home care? There were a lot of the ARPA dollars that were put out there for HCBS to recognize the value of home care and make sure that the compensation is there. Policymakers and lawmakers need to help us grow the pie of people who are interested in providing home care.