Contessa – the higher-acuity care provider and subsidiary of Amedisys Inc. (Nasdaq: AMED) – has extended its partnership with Mount Sinai Health System.

Under the extension, Mount Sinai South Nassau’s home health agency will now become a part of the two organizations’ existing joint venture. The JV now includes home health, hospital-at-home, SNF-level care at home and palliative care.

What has now been created is the home health agency “Mount Sinai at Home,” a home-based care agency with capabilities across the continuum of care.

“This new initiative accelerates our strategic goal of delivering a continuum of home-based care to more Mount Sinai patients,” Contessa COO Aaron Stein said in a statement. “Mount Sinai at Home provides a strong offering to patients, providers and health plans. Together, we are truly changing healthcare by rendering care where patients want it the most, their homes.”

The New York-based Mount Sinai Health System has a network of 43,000 employees, 400 outpatient practices and nearly 300 labs. In terms of extending into home-based care, it has historically been an innovator. Contessa and Mount Sinai partnered to launch palliative care services last February.

On its end, the Nashville-based Contessa partners with 12 health systems and 30 health plans, serving patients in nine total states. Amedisys – one of the largest home health providers in the country – acquired Contessa in June of 2021.

Contessa and Mount Sinai originally partnered on hospital-at-home initiatives in 2017. Mount Sinai at Home – formerly Mount Sinai’s South Nassau home health agency – treats 3,000 patients per year.

“Mount Sinai at Home will allow South Nassau to expand our services to patients in the growing areas like hospital at home, home care and home infusion therapy,” Dr. Adhi Sharma, the president of Mount Sinai South Nassau, said in a statement. “We have a long tradition of bringing high quality patient care directly to the home where it can be delivered in more comfortable and familiar surroundings, often at reduced cost. Increasingly, this is what patients want and we are pleased to be on the cutting edge of that trend.”

These kinds of partnerships are what Amedisys has recently been touting about Contessa.

The acquisition was always going to be a near-term drag on financials for Amedisys, but these sorts of deals are transforming what Contessa can do for the company right now, much to the delight of Amedisys leaders. 

“What we’ve seen happen now is … some super large urban cities have these large health systems that want to provide the full continuum of care, and they want to leverage capabilities from hospital at home to end-of-life care in the home,” Amedisys CEO Chris Gerard said in June.