IHS vies for Columbia’s home care business

Integrated Health Services in Owings Mills, MD, is negotiating to buy the home care operations of Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp., said IHS Chairman and CEO Robert Elkins, MD, at a recent analysts’ conference in New York. Elkins told the conference attendees that IHS’ and Columbia’s home care operations would be spun off into a separate company managed by IHS, should the deal go through.

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IHS and Columbia are two of the nation’s largest providers of home care. IHS operates 525 agencies in 34 states, which accounted for $600 million in revenues last year. Columbia Homecare Group operates about 500 agencies in 32 states. As a division, it produced between 1% and 2% of Columbia’s nearly $20 billion in annual revenues last year.