One of Baltimore’s longtime companies has embraced a new idea of “smart growth.”
Remedi SeniorCare, known until recently as Woodhaven Health Services, had a busy summer, changing its name and branding and almost doubling its size with the purchase of a similar company in Ohio.
But CEO Michael Mahon said that’s where their growth will stop, for now. Remedi provides pharmacy services to senior homes and assisted-living facilities, and Mahon said the company plans to focus on its service, not expansion, in the near future.
“We think you deliver better care when you’re focused on specific areas than a ton of areas,” Mahon said. “It’s not a shotgun approach. In our industry, your reputation, it precedes you, and people are always aware of your reputation. We have never been seen as a company that’s more interested in just growing.”
In July, Remedi announced it acquired Covington, Ohio-based HealthCare Pharmacy. The merger brought the number of residents served by Remedi to 10,600 in Maryland and 10,400 in Ohio.
To keep track of those residents’ needs and their customers’ supply, Remedi launched a new online database called MyRemedi. The database tracks the medications used by residents of facilities served by Remedi, and provides administrators with an instant snapshot of supply and specifications for those medications.
“The goal for MyRemedi is really to put information into the hands of our customers so they can make better operational, financial and medical decisions,” said Remedi senior vice president Alan Bronfein. “Controlling our costs are very material to them in making a profit or not.”
The average nursing home resident takes between seven and 11 medications daily, said Matt Maurano, administrator of Transitions Healthcare in Sykesville, a Remedi customer. Some of those medications are expensive, Maurano said, and it’s important to know when a resident is scheduled to stop taking them.
“We don’t have any room for waste in this business,” Maurano said.
Mahon said Remedi’s business is protected from the current economic crisis due to an aging population’s ongoing need for nursing homes and assisted living facilities, but said there are no current plans to take advantage of that position with further growth.
“What we do here in Maryland, we do well,” Mahon said, “and we can overlay it in other markets and provide better care to the resident.”
