This year alone, Sweetwater Care has grown from seven buildings to 16 – adding nine facilities since February.
With skilled nursing facilities already in California, Colorado and Montana, the operator is not only actively looking for opportunities in states where they already have a presence, but are also eyeing possible deals in Texas, Idaho and Oregon.
“We’ve seen lots of opportunities and are eager to keep growing,” Sweetwater CFO Kyle Shields told Skilled Nursing News. “This year has brought a lot of opportunity and … COVID hasn’t completely scared us off.”
Even though the company has only been in business since 2017, Shields said the leadership team has worked together for decades.
It’s the long standing relationships in the markets they’ve grown in and the people they’ve worked with that’s made them successful at continued growth throughout the pandemic, according to Shields.
“We’ve had a lot of history with other kinds of dealmakers, landlords in past lives who appreciate the work we do, and so most of our opportunities have come because an operator has kind of failed in what they promised to be able to do. Or in one case has just walked away from operations and so people come to us because they know that we’re willing and able to step in quickly and have the stomach for a lot of the hard problems that exist when an operator abandons a facility,” he said.
Not only has Sweetwater been active in the hot acquisition market that’s occurred in the last year, Shields said they’ve been approached recently by individuals who are interested in buying their assets – something that has not occurred since they got into the business.
He attributes at least some of the accelerated transaction volume seen throughout the industry to reimbursement not keeping up with cost increases.
“So you have people who’ve been in the market for a while, have been moderately successful, but now through COVID they’ve realized that it does take a lot of work to run a successful business and are now willing to get out,” he said.
With 14% of its workforce gone since the start of the pandemic, Sweetwater Care, like many nursing home operators, has been on the lookout for creative ways to bring in much needed caregivers. While not having to impose any admissions bans at this time due to staffing, the operator has had to, at times, turn to traveling nurses and agency workers.
“Our mission is to really help buildings that have struggled historically become the provider of choice and in order to do that you have to be willing to take patients and so we feel like the burden is on us to accept the patients and solve staffing, whether that be through agency or traveling nurses … rather than leaving patients to find other options in the marketplace,” Shields said.
He said Sweetwater has been able to develop relationships with a lot of the agency staffing that is brought in and the company has actually bought out several contracts.
“I think a lot of times they turn to the agency environment because they feel it’s an opportunity to make more money,” Shields said. “We help them understand that your hourly wage may be different but look at all these other benefits we offer to employees and the stability of life that you can have and the stability of care you can help provide here.”
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