Avamere Aims to Create Post-Acute Network with New Corporate Structure

A major provider of senior housing and care services across the acuity spectrum on Wednesday announced an internal reorganization, with the eventual goal of evolving into a post-acute care network for its residents.

The Avamere Family of Companies moved to consolidate its separate entities — senior housing and skilled nursing operator Avamere Living, therapy provider Infinity Rehab, and home health and hospice agency Signature Healthcare at Home — into more of a top-down structure. The goal, according to the company, is to break down some of the barriers among the varying levels of services, so that in the future, residents can seamlessly transition from one to the other without hangups.

“We need to change internally to meet the demands of a growing and transforming health care system,” chief operating officer Bob Thomas said in a statement announcing the decision. “Our customers deserve a seamless experience during this process.”

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Across its offerings, Avamere operates 61 communities, predominately located in Washington and Oregon — with smaller concentrations of properties in Idaho, Colorado, Nebraska, and New Mexico.

Founder Rick Miller will stay on as CEO of the Wilsonville, Ore.-based Avamere, with each individual brand retaining its own separate consumer-facing identity. Matt Hilty will serve as executive vice president of the company’s communities division, with Brad Litle helming Avamere’s skilled nursing division.

The company will also continue to have a separate leader — Nicolette Merino — for its new Ovation brand of so-called “micro-CCRCs,” or continuing care retirement communities without the skilled nursing offering that has long defined the full-service sites of senior care and living. Ovation last month announced the development of two such properties in Utah and Nebraska, set to open in 2020, that will offer skilled care to residents either through its own affiliates or select nearby third parties.

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“When you look at national skilled nursing occupancies over the past 10 years, they’re not going up, right? A lot of [skilled nursing residents] are being sent to assisted living instead,” chief development officer Ryan Haller told Skilled Nursing News in February. “At the end of the day, we think we’re just addressing what the population is doing.”

Written by Alex Spanko

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