The CEO of PruittHealth is bullish on how a newly announced partnership with another major post-acute provider will drive population health efforts while focusing the organizations on their true competition.

PruittHealth and Community Health Services of Georgia (CHSGa) are the two largest post-acute care providers in the Peach State; their partnership, announced on Oct. 31, brings together their largely distinct markets, with PruittHealth concentrated largely in urban areas and CHSGa focused on rural locations. By pooling resources and collecting standardized data, the organizations seek to enhance population health management and better coordinate dual-eligible care and at-risk populations.

The partnership may help with critical rural health care challenges like physician and nurse shortages, PruittHealth CEO Neil Pruitt told Skilled Nursing News, while providing more home care and reducing travel time for post-acute care services. In other words, best-in-class care regardless of setting.

Data sharing will begin with population health management, specifically related to the companies’ Institutional Special Needs Plans (I-SNP) plans. PruittHealth and CHSGa will share best practices to drive better outcomes and lower hospitalizations.

Offering more physician and nurse practitioner services could help drive down hospital readmissions and increase patient satisfaction under Medicare Advantage plans, he added. Pruitt also touched on trending topics including the federal government shutdown and expectations for how the current administration might help the industry.

Key initiatives in the partnership include PruittHealth’s acquisition of Traditions Health and Rehabilitation in Lithonia with a transition date of mid-December, as well as the transition of home health care services in Athens-Clarke County.

CHSGa’s home health offices in Albany and Vidalia are transitioning to PruittHealth as well.

PruittHealth is headquartered in Norcross, Georgia, and offers a variety of services – including skilled nursing facility care – across the Southeast. CHSGa is headquartered in Macon, Georgia, and serves more than 60,000 patients a year through a variety of service lines, including at skilled nursing centers.

SNN: How do offerings and markets compare between PruittHealth and CHSGa?

Pruitt: We offer very similar services. We don’t overlap in many markets, and both our organizations are the two largest in Georgia. By leveraging the resources, we think that we’re going to be able to do something unique and special.

How did the deal come about?

Our organizations have been cooperating pretty closely since the pandemic in coming up with the best way to respond to the crisis. In the process, we realized that between the two of us, we touch a lot of local communities in Georgia, and our footprints don’t really overlap that much.

Our competition isn’t really each other, it’s the larger insurance companies. This is a way to leverage both our organization’s resources to improve clinical outcomes and make sure that we’re meeting the needs of our patients and the communities in which they live.

Can you explain the terms of the partnership a bit more?

It’s not a merger. There were a couple of assets that will be transitioned to us, including home health and a single skilled nursing facility in the Metropolitan Atlanta area. Beyond that, it’s more of cooperation and really realizing that we collaborate more than compete.

How will the partnership enhance care coordination among rural communities?

We both operate I-SNPs, we both serve at-risk populations through dual eligible [plans], D-SNPs. The thought is that best practices among both our organizations will help improve outcomes that ultimately will improve the communities that we serve. It’s about leveraging the resources and expertise of both organizations to come up with best practices.

Explain more about how key assets will align between the companies?

Our organization has a large presence in urban areas, while their organization has a large presence in the rural areas.

They will be transitioning a single skilled nursing facility to us in the Atlanta area, where they don’t have operations, and they will be transitioning their home health lines to us … all the other services that each of us offers will remain the same. So it’s a realignment of certain assets. The exciting part is collaborating on population health and making sure that we are able to offer what is offered in the marketplace today.

Any long-term thoughts about the partnership, considering struggles to provide care in rural settings?

In Georgia, there’s a shortage of physicians and there’s a shortage of nurses across the country and especially in the rural communities. By being able to manage our patients in their homes, we’re able to prevent them from having to travel sometimes 100 miles to receive post-acute care.

We want to maximize outcomes, whether that be in their home or in a skilled nursing facility. PruittHealth in the state of Georgia serves more people in their home than … in skilled nursing facilities. Offering care in rural settings, whether it’s through our organization or through theirs, we’ll be able to really keep [residents] in a convenient place to receive care and achieve superior outcomes.

What does the future of skilled care and home care look like for rural Georgia and in other parts of the country?

I’m excited about the opportunity to offer physician services in our organization under the auspices of our Medicare Advantage plan, and CHSGa is able to do the same thing. In a traditional nursing home you really don’t have nurse practitioners or physicians in house. Instead you have your standard medical director.

The goal is to drive down readmissions to acute care settings, to promote clinical markers and increase customer satisfaction. It will enhance health care, being able to provide in rural communities, instead of forcing them to travel to see a physician or to receive acute care services.

What else is top of mind for PruittHealth operations?

Well, we’re seeing our occupancy improve dramatically. Prepandemic, we were around 89% occupancy. We slipped down to 67% and we’re back up to 86%. We are starting to see a softening of the labor market, which allows us to care for even more patients. One of the trends that I see is being able to serve nursing home patients in their homes, being able to keep them at home longer. It’s what we always say, we want to be the nursing home company that doesn’t want you in a nursing home.

With the Big Beautiful Bill, Medicaid programs will be under pressure, but we believe that we can work with the states in which we operate to remain relatively unaffected. I’m bullish on the industry, I’m bullish on where we are, and I think this partnership symbolizes the recommitment of both our organizations to the sector.

What about the government shutdown and how that’s affecting PruittHealth?

We are still receiving complaint surveys, but not our annual regulatory reviews. Five-Star doesn’t change because surveys aren’t being updated. That’s the main effect … We are hopeful that the shutdown ends relatively soon.

Any other commentary on how the industry will be affected by the Trump administration?

I think it’s going to be interesting to watch what this administration does with regulation. There are reams and reams of regulations we have to adhere to that sometimes are contradictory to one another. I think there’s creative things that this administration could do with Joint Commission Accreditation, and having status similar to the hospitals I think would be a major step forward.

They’ve shown a willingness to work with our industry and our profession, and we’re excited. The proof will be in the pudding, but all indications are that we could really rationalize the amount of regulation and increase efficiency and, ultimately, clinical outcomes.