The Pennant Group (Nasdaq: PNTG) has maintained census and improved margins in its existing home health and hospice operations while moving through a major asset integration.
While large acquisitions like Pennant’s acquisition of former UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH) and Amedisys assets can be disruptive, Pennant’s local operating model helped drive same-store census, revenue and margin growth during the transition, company leaders said during the Jefferies Healthcare Services Conference on Sept. 15.
“Anytime you do an acquisition that’s the size of what we’ve been in the midst of the last year, it can be really disruptive,” Brent Guerisoli, Pennant CEO and board chairman, said at the conference. “In our model, we require a lot of our local teams to support anytime we do an acquisition.”
Pennant Group announced in October 2025 that it purchased home health, hospice and personal care services from healthcare giant UnitedHealth for a combined $146.5 million. The assets were divested as part of UnitedHealth’s (NYSE: UNH) $3.3 billion acquisition of Amedisys in August 2025.
Pennant’s purchased assets across 54 locations in Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama.
In the months since acquiring these assets, Pennant president and chief operating officer John Gochnour attributed Pennant’s same-store growth to its local operating model and its ability to adapt to the needs of individual communities.
“If you empower local leaders, you give them transparent data, you give them decision making and then you support them with peer accountability, they’re going to be able to make decisions that are in concert with their aligned incentive programs,” Gochnour said
Pennant is modestly ahead of schedule in transitioning the acquired Southeast assets, Gochnour said. During such transitions, the company expects some disruption as clinicians undergo training and learn new systems. That process usually leads to a decline in admissions and census, but the company did not see a drop during its first four transition waves.
“[Clinicians are] carrying multiple devices as they go out, and we generally see a little bit of a drop off in census and admissions, and throughout the first three waves, we didn’t see that. Going into wave four, we didn’t see that,” Gochnour said. “That was really a result of one the things that we’ve learned through the course of this you know two-year journey of improving our acquisition process.”
Gochnour added that retaining staff helped preserve the company’s census.
The next wave
Pennant is now entering its fifth transition wave of Amedisys assets in western and central Tennessee, Gochnour said. This wave is not only the largest but includes multiple transitions with Amedisys Hospice and Amedisys Home Health, as well as LHC Hospice and LHC Home Health units.
“We’ve been a little bit ahead of schedule, and as a result of that, our performance has been stronger in 2026,” Guerisoli said. “We recognize, though that there’s still some waves going on within the transition of these assets in the Southeast. We want to make sure we’re conservative enough looking through the end of the year to acknowledge that there might be some lumpiness in the results there too.”
Gouchnour said the company projected a 9.5% to 11.5% margin profile for the acquired business in 2026. Results had come in “a little bit above that so far,” he added, while remaining within its expected range.
The company plans to increase its margin profile to 18% at a nine-quarter business optimization when bringing underperforming businesses up to its targets, Gochnour added.
“Through ‘27 and into ‘28, we’re going to see those margins come right in line with our other businesses,” he said.
Eagle, Idaho-based Pennant Group is the parent firm to Pennant, a home health, home care, hospice and palliative care services across 17 states.
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