CompleteOK to Open Texas De Novo Within 6 Months

Oklahoma-based Hospice provider CompleteOK recently entered the Texas market with the purchase of a license from Avenir Hospice Care for an undisclosed sum. With the license in hand, the company expects to open a de novo in that area within six months.

Acquiring a license generally requires less capital than purchasing an entrenched asset already in operation. License transactions are often favorable for smaller organizations that seek to expand, but may struggle to outbid a large strategic buyer or private equity firm.

“We find value [in a license acquisition] in the fact that it’s an open canvas,” Cleland Edwards, owner of CompleteOK told Hospice News. “We get to take the agency and build it from the ground up. So we know exactly what we have going forward.”

Advertisement

The forthcoming location will be located in Richardson, Texas. The company plans to expand to the Sherman, Texas community in the near future.

CompleteOK has begun recruiting staff for the new location, leveraging social media communication and networking by their existing employees.

“We hit the ground running and used our word of mouth and the network that we have in Oklahoma in CompleteOK,” Edwards said. “And it’s worked out for us.

Advertisement

Demographics are pushing up demand for hospice in Texas. Projections from the U.S. Census Bureau indicate that seniors will comprise more than 20% of the state’s population by 2030, up from 12.9% currently.

Hospice utilization among Medicare decedents in Texas runs high, reaching 52.1% in 2018, tipping above the national average of 50.3% that year, according to the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization.

“Texas is rampant with home health and hospice opportunities. We see high levels of interest from all of our buyers in those spaces,” Alex Veach, director of operations for the M&A advisory firm Agenda Health, told Hospice News. “From a saturation standpoint, it’s second to California in terms of the number of home health and hospice agencies that exist.”

Agenda Health represented Avenir in the transaction.

The Avenir license deal is one of three the CompleteOK has executed this year, including one located in Littleton, Colorado, and another in Wichita Falls, Texas.

“We plan to get those headed in the right direction. We feel like they’re going that way now,” Edwards said. “We’ll build census and try to get those two to a healthy number that we think we can live with.”

Companies featured in this article:

, ,