NAHC, NHPCO Merger Remains On ‘Aggressive Timeline’

In October, National Association for Home Care & Hospice (NAHC) President William A. Dombi announced that his organization and the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO) were planning to merge.

The plan came with what Dombi described as an “aggressive timeline,” hoping the merger would be done by 2024.

“It’s an aggressive timeline even if we’ve been moving very, very deliberately,” Dombi told a group of reporters at NAHC’s annual conference. “We have yet to exchange the data and have it analyzed on the due diligence side of things. Obviously, fiduciary obligations tell us we’ve got to do a deep dive here, and no one’s not cooperating in this — it’s just going to take some time.”

From now until the potential merger, NAHC and NHPCO will be operating business as usual and will work as two separate entities. If the merger is finalized, the two will then integrate their businesses together and will work on a combined strategy that will be put in place for 2025.

During a keynote speech at NAHC’s annual conference, Dombi said the goal of the merger is to create “one single organization integrated from top to bottom, with the recognition that health care at home is a broad breadth of services that we’re there to represent.”

Following the announcement, Dombi told reporters that he and NAHC had received some pushback about the merger, particularly from one sector.

“Most of the negative comments, for example, have included, ‘Will hospice get lost in this mix?’” Dombi said. “Those are coming from people who don’t really understand that hospice is not a new area for us. There have been decades of very successful work on the advocacy side for hospice. The education side of [the merger] should take care of some of the criticisms and some of the questions that have been raised.”

As far as Dombi’s future with the association, he is expected to stay on board through 2024 to see through the potential merger. After that is still up in air.

“The intention is that I’m here through 2024,” Dombi said. “With an expectation that, assuming we come together somewhere in the middle of the year, then I’m there in the role of the new organization as the president emeritus. Something like that.”

The latest

During a virtual town hall meeting earlier this month, NAHC’s board chair Ken Albert said the next few months will consist of organizational structure meetings with a steering committee and a CEO search for the new association.

“We will absolutely identify the economic and financial framework that we need to work with in order to be able to balance association management with highly qualified staff to produce a value-based product for our members,” Albert said. “I think that also includes hopefully being able to take some reserves on an annual basis to invest in a portfolio for rainy day investment. I think that’s prudent under these circumstances. It reminds me that we need to continue to reassure our members that business prudence and due diligence is being employed all along the way as we’re designing what this new organization will look like.”

The definitive agreement should be signed and finalized by the end of the year, Albert said.

“Our conversations are always focused around what members need,” Albert said. “Building something that is with an eye towards the future and taking the best from both organizations as we move forward.”