[January 09, 2011] Texas company purchases area health care provider Tweet Jan 09, 2011 (The Hutchinson News - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Faith Home Health and Hospice LLC, a Wichita health care provider that opened an office in Hutchinson in 2009, has been purchased by a Texas-based company. Faith Home Health has been providing home health, hospice and private-pay home health services in Wichita, Hutchinson and surrounding areas. Its acquisition by Harden Healthcare will allow the Austin company to enter the home health industry in Kansas, said Mike McMaude, Harden Healthcare chief operating officer. "We asked our local managers and associates in the Wichita and Hutchinson market who would be the best provider to do that if we made an acquisition," McMaude said. "They always said Faith was the number one care provider. It had the greatest reputation and a mission similar to ours. We were able to talk to the owner and negotiate a deal." Financial details of the purchase were not disclosed. Harden Healthcare provides health care services, primarily for seniors, in 13 states and employs approximately 34,000 people full- and part-time in nearly 200 locations. It consists of several companies that offer a post-acute continuum of care for seniors, including skilled nursing, assisted living, rehabilitation, hospice and home health care. The company, one of the largest hospice providers in the Midwestern U.S. with more than 2,300 patients in five states, already provides hospice services in Hutchinson and other parts of Kansas through its subsidiary Hospice Care of Kansas, which it acquired last year. The plan, McMaude said, is for hospice employees of Faith Home Health to shift to Hospice Care of Kansas. All other staff will remain, including Faith Home Health founder and executive director Kelly Bowlin, who will head up Harden's home health operations in Kansas. "All the people will be staying, all the caregivers," McMaude said. "Nothing changes." "Current patients of Faith Home Health and Hospice will continue to receive the same great patient care they have come to expect, but will now have broader access to services through Harden Healthcare," Lew Little, chief executive officer of Harden Healthcare, stated in a release. "Harden will continue to focus our expansion in the Central U.S." Faith Home and Hospice, a family-owned business, started in Wichita in January 2003. It opened an office at 125 W. Second Ave. in July 2009. Harden Healthcare was founded in 2001 to operate a number of nursing homes and it has continually expanded. Total revenue for the company in 2010 was projected to be approximately $700 million. To see more of The Hutchinson News or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.hutchnews.com. Copyright (c) 2011, The Hutchinson News, Kan. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]