Gilchrist and Luminis Health Form Joint Venture, Find ‘Sweet Spot’ in Health Care Delivery

Maryland-based hospice and palliative care provider Gilchrist recently formed a joint venture with the hospital system Luminis Health to expand the full scope of senior and geriatric care in the state’s southern region.

Through the JV, the two organizations formed the Luminis Health Gilchrist Lifecare Institute as a way to provide an “integrative continuum of care for the elderly across multiple settings,” in communities statewide, according to a recent announcement.

The JV was born out of a need to improve access to serious illness and end-of-life care, according to Dr. Mitchell Schwartz, president of clinical enterprise and chief physician executive at Luminis Health. Collaborating allows the health system to enhance early identification of patients in need of hospice and palliative care sooner, as well as reduce rehospitalizations and emergency department visits, he said.

“In the end, the business model is all about the wrap-around services, and hospice is a part of that,” Schwartz told Hospice News. “It’s about connecting a community of need to this type of care and delivering a complete, seamless care approach to care for these patients. You can’t do that if you don’t contract and work with someone to provide hospice care. This is the path we took to integrating that.”

The JV is launching in a single county,,with plans for gradual expansion. It extends the organizations’ existing partnership for hospital-based palliative care services, bringing this care into more settings such as hospitals, physician offices, long-term care facilities and in the home. Gilchrist clinicians will also provide hospice care through the JV at the Luminis Health Anne Arundel Medical Center.

Founded in 1994, Gilchrist is a nonprofit provider that cares for more than 900 patients daily across Central Maryland, including Baltimore and Howard counties. The organization provides services at its three inpatient hospice centers, in patient homes, and in facilities like assisted living, skilled nursing and other residential community care centers.

Gilchrist will soon expand services with an inpatient pediatric hospice facility in Baltimore City, Md., independent of the JV.

Luminis Health was established in 2019 and generates an annual $1.1 billion in operating revenue. The health system’s roughly 6,600 employees, including 1,900 medical staff, provide primary, specialty, emergency, hospital and mental health care across eight counties in Maryland.

The institute aims to better meet the needs of the swelling aging population while also reducing costly and unnecessary hospitalizations, the company indicated in a press release.

“It’s taken a lot of time and work together, but it’s going to be worth it for the patients,” said Schwartz. “We think we really have a sweet spot here. This venture is like having a quarterback for geriatric patients with multiple chronic illnesses, someone who is monitoring care, understanding their choices and goals and putting the patient at the center of all it.”

As they integrated services through the JV, Gilchrist and Luminis developed a business model in which both providers took on shared risks and costs to meet significant demand for hospice and palliative care, according to Catherine Hamel, executive vice president of continuing care and president of Gilchrist.

“This is truly a 50/50 joint venture. All revenue, all expenses flow through the venture, and both parties share the funding of losses or sharing of gains,” Hamel told Hospice News.

Seniors 60 and older in Maryland are projected to represent 26.57% of its overall population (or 6.7 million people), a rise from roughly 22% in 2020, according to the state’s Department of Aging.

Though demographics are driving up demand for serious illness and end-of-life care, hospice utilization in Maryland is lagging behind national rates. About 47.6% of Medicare decedents elected hospice during 2018, according to the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. This trailed behind the national average of 50.3% that year.

In forming the Luminis-Gilchrist JV, the organizations aim to change the health care delivery system, Hamel told Hospice News. Among their objectives is to break down silos to improve coordination, quality, and transitions of care, she stated.

“Opportunities for problem-solving just are there in a vendor relationship,” Hamel told Hospice News. “This is really about an equal partnership where both groups are bringing learning and experience together to the table in an effort to reach this bigger goal, which is to have people experience better care and die better under this venture than they did before. I can’t stress enough the difference between being a partner versus a vendor relationship.”

More hospice and palliative care providers are pursuing joint ventures with hospitals and health systems to bridge gaps in care. JVs represented 69 out of 109 transactions that involved a hospital or health system in the home health and hospice space from 2014 to 2021, according to data from the merger and acquisition advisory firm The Braff Group. 

Fueling the prevalence of hospice and home health JVs is a drive to improve care transitions and reach patients sooner in their illness trajectories. These partnerships offer a way for providers to build patient pathways with “unique advantages” compared to traditional referral streams, Aaron Stein, COO of the Amedisys (NASDAQ: AMED) subsidiary Contessa Health, previously told Hospice News.