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Anant Mohan, who has been Chief Operating Officer at Ellala Caring since 2021, took over the role of CEO last month.
With Mohan at the helm, Elara Caring is turning to enhanced high-level care at home, achieving a seamless patient experience across the company's multiple service lines and fostering further innovation.
According to Mohan, strengthening Elara Caring's high vision care delivery remains a strategic priority as the company continues to see patients with increasingly complex needs.
“We're leaning on it on every service line,” he told Home Health Care News. “We are a company that our partners trust and we face challenges with skills and compassion.”
Elara Caring is one of the largest home care providers in the United States. The Dallas-based company has around 200 locations in seven states and serves more than 60,000 patients. The company's service lines include home hygiene, hospice, personal care, behavioral health, palliative care and more.
Elara Caring focuses on high-level care delivery with the goal of fostering a more integrated patient care experience across many service lines.
“We believe in the continuity of care… Elaraconnect is our wraparound for that,” Mohan said. “The seamless patient experience of different types of care and care levels is who we are. It will remain a major investment focus for us.”
For many years, Elara Caring has been part of a cohort of companies that have strategically positioned the organization as a one-stop shop for home-based care.
For Mohan, innovation is also the best, especially when it comes to AI-Adoption. Last year, Elara Caring leveraged Apricot, a generative AI platform, to enable clinicians to manage documents.
Last year, the company partnered with Constant Therapy Health to provide AI-enabled linguistic and cognitive therapies.
“For us, the key to technology and AI is to allow more patients and caregivers time,” Mohan said. “That's the purpose. We'll deploy technology towards something that can be removed to increase it.”
Mohan confirmed that Elara Caring is also investigating other use cases for the company's AI-Tools. However, he quickly explained that the company did not implement technology for itself.
“Ultimately for us, it's not about technology,” Mohan said. “It's about the technology that enables the care we provide. We pilot, evolve, adapt. We have to prove that in the delivery of care. That's the goal. We're noticing that we scale anything until we can prove value.”
Value-based care, M&A, and future challenges
Given Elara Caring's goals regarding creating higher care, innovation and a more integrated patient care experience, value-based care is in line with these priorities.
One way we position ourselves for value-based care success is by investing in virtual primary care options through Teladoc Health.
In addition to the other home healthcare industries, Elara Caring also engages in value-based care through a Home Healthcare Value-Based Purchasing (HHVBP) model. In the past, Elara Caring pointed out that HHVBP allows the company to learn more about what was working and what wasn't working in various places.
“When we consider the components of hospitalization and addition of outcomes, high quality metrics, and patient satisfaction components, it's who we want and is consistent with the future of value-based care,” Mohan said. “It's a learning muscle for our industry, but we think it's really good.”
Aside from its value-based care focus, Elara Caring navigates the same operational and financial issues as its industry peers.
One of these key challenges is the recently announced 2026 Home Health Proposal Rules. The US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) proposal cuts a 6.4% total to home health care, with a $135 million decrease compared to 2025.
“We're upset from the fee announcement here,” Mohan said. “I think on the rates and regulatory side we continue to recognize the value that home hygiene brings to total cost of care. Ultimately, that's what matters.”
Since the proposed rules were released, industry leaders and advocacy groups have spoken out about how reductions continue to restrict access to care. Many were also critical of the neutrality methodology of CMS budgets. Mohan also joined in pushing back to his industry peers.
“When you look at all the reasons that margin analysis, budget neutrality, all of these kinds of reasons justify rate reductions, it's like ignoring the flaws in your calculations,” he said.
Elara Caring will focus on driving the company's growth in the future. The company is bullish about M&A as a way to promote growth.
“We're seeing that more and more in our future,” Mohan said. “After not doing too much, we've made several acquisitions over the last 18 months. There are many small institutions that benefit from joining the platform, so we see opportunities.”
Ultimately, Mohan believes that all of the experiences he gained as COO of Elara Caring prepared him for this next chapter.
“The role of COOs helped me build deep and strong relationships with the entire company and with the leaders,” he said. “They are the heroes behind everything we have achieved. When we think about the transformation we are where we are, we held hands in shaping most of the initiatives we are to reach Ellara as we are today. I had the front row seating of Scott Powers, who has been an incredible partner and mentor for the past four years.
