Healthview Home Health Services has grown dramatically in recent years, making the Inc. 5000 list this year and is on track to double in size by the end of 2025.
But Healthview hasn't made aggressive growth its top priority. Instead, the company has prioritized achieving growth at an appropriate pace. One way Healthview is maintaining this growth is by focusing on creating an environment that attracts and retains staff, especially in the competitive Southern California market.
While this healthcare provider prioritizes strategic growth, it also struggles with managed care plans. Healthview CEO Steven Gonzalez told Home Health Care News that home health and hospice providers should “try to remove them from our systems.”
Gonzalez is also looking to fully embrace AI and empower future leaders. HHCN recently spoke with Gonzalez to discuss his approach to growth, the role of managed care in healthcare, and how Healthview leverages AI technology.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
HHCN: What are the biggest opportunities you see in the home care space?
Gonzalez: Speed and velocity of the AI. The integration of AI alleviates many routine tasks that take clinicians away from their patients. More time is returned to actual patient interaction, charting time is reduced, there are many faster processes, and the human element is more evident in patient care. At this pace and speed next year, we will be even more surprised. We are on the cutting edge of that.
What we're working on right now is culturally making sure that everyone is AI-savvy. We offer paid Enterprise subscriptions to all full-time employees we manage, allowing them to influence their work. I want them to fully understand how it works.
What are the biggest financial challenges in the home care space today? How has HealthView been able to overcome these challenges?
I think managed care is probably the biggest issue we're dealing with.
(Due to Home Health's proposed payment rules) we were able to actually spend a day in the hills and talk to the people who are paying us to make their voices heard. Managed care doesn't have that. There isn't a day that goes by that we go to every managed care company and complain about how ridiculous the amounts they are paying us are. A 6% rate cut is child's play compared to the amount paid for managed care home health care. You can see that the usage is decreasing. Healthcare providers are unable to admit patients. Because there is a loss for each patient who receives managed care.
When you drive down the freeway and see a big building with a managed care company's name on it, you say, where is all that money going? As home care and home health providers, we must step up and try to remove them from our system. I don't think they belong in home health care or hospice.
Your company was named to the Inc. 5000 this year. What do you see as Healthview's main growth drivers?
Our growth is driven by a great employee experience, as we receive more referrals than we can handle at this time. All that is required is that there be enough clinicians to provide treatment. To drive our growth, our culture, the way we treat nurses, the way we treat physical therapists and occupational therapists, we need to be differentiators. It's really about hiring and creating a good experience.
We're in Los Angeles County in Southern California, so we have Kaiser, Optum, and a health system that has its own home health and hospice (segment). We're dealing with very large, heavily funded companies that offer all kinds of perks and job security. We provide all of these things.
You say culture is what sets Healthview apart and drives its growth. Can you talk about how that looks at your company?
Many of them focus only on actual employees. When it comes to our leadership style, we take great pride in meeting people where they are and finding out who they are, what their growth plans are, etc.
Since I have a technical background, it has relieved me of many things, including the stress and tedious tasks of creating graphs. We were able to automate quite a bit with some oversight to give people back time and flexibility.
If you succeed, you will receive even more profits. We are still private. Just me and my two partners. We have no private equity backing. There are no other influences on how we want to run the company. We have no plans to sell the company. Our vision is long-term, so we don't intend to turn the company upside down. I think if you approach it that way, your staff will feel like, “In three years, I won't be able to sell anything, so I'll have to do something else.'' I think that's more humane. Our leadership team, including myself, has been very proactive. I treat everyone on my team very well. That has a lot to do with it.
We are also leader builders and don't see this as the latest promotion. An executive director of a hospice business, which is a fairly large business, she had previously been a night runner and had potential. Don't just look at the standards that other companies are looking at. I think because we are so close to people, we recognize certain talents and cultural integrations. We focus on whether they fit into this culture. If they can do it and they have the license and motivation to do it, we have a platform for them to grow. We are very focused on supporting the growth of our leaders.
What new ways are expected to achieve growth in 2026?
I've been part of very high growth companies with growth rates in the thousands of percent. This is a very dangerous proposition, especially when dealing with caregiving. As I said, we're not in a bad place with referrals. We can grow at a healthy pace without burning people out or overworking them, but that's a healthy enough pace to hit the Inc. 5000. This year we're twice as big, but if you ask the team, it feels like any other day. We set goals every day and in the end it is calculated that we will grow in that quarter. It's really just consistency and daily dedication…achieving these goals every day.
What else is Healthview currently working on? Are there any programs, pilots, or interesting partnerships you'd like to share?
We serve a population that unfortunately many health care providers are reluctant to accept. We are committed to restorative care and essentially own and manage skilled homeless shelters. We work with assisted living facilities that provide housing to people who are homeless. We provide housing, as well as skilled home health care and hospice. We have a large managed care hospice population that we care for. In many cases, they would become homeless without recuperative care, a shelter that we can support and house them in.
Our goal is to find nurses with purpose because our staff cares for more challenging populations. We also want to contribute to the city's overall success in helping (people) on the streets.
As CEO, what are your main areas of focus for the rest of this year?
I want to continue to focus on employee experience and strive to do it well. If we can do that, we have proven that margins will improve and growth will occur. I think just focus on that and a lot of other things will follow after that. We also make sure that[employees]are safe and that these technologies don't put people out of work, they just make it more work for them.
