{
  "id": 2410605,
  "title": "Aveanna Healthcare (AVAH) Just Ended A Four-Year Rate Fight",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/21/aveanna-healthcare-avah-just-ended-a-four-year-rate-fight",
  "topic": "finance",
  "section": "Finance & Markets",
  "published": "2026-08-21T16:31:57.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Yahoo Finance",
    "slug": "yahoo-finance",
    "url": "https://finance.yahoo.com/healthcare/articles/aveanna-healthcare-avah-just-ended-163157568.html"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "On August 13, Aveanna Healthcare (AVAH) presented its second-quarter earnings call, showcasing a marked improvement from previous quarters spent addressing caregiver shortages. The company's revenue surged 13.7% year-over-year, reaching approximately $670 million, with all three of its divisions posting growth. The spotlight moment arrived when CEO Jeffrey Shaner announced that California's 2027 budget would include a significant increase in pediatric private duty nursing rates, starting January 1, 2027, effectively concluding a four-year advocacy campaign that impacted all 32 of the company's private duty states.\n\nThroughout the call, Aveanna's strategy of aligning caregiver capacity with payers willing to pay emerged as a winning formula. Home health and hospice services saw a 14.8% year-over-year revenue increase, private duty services grew by 14.0%, and medical solutions expanded by 9.4%, with adjusted EBITDA rising 8% to $95.4 million. The government side of the equation saw Aveanna secure seven state rate enhancements in the second quarter, anticipating more as state budget processes wrap up in the third quarter, with California being the most significant gain.\n\nOn the payer side, private duty services now boast 37 preferred payer agreements, covering 64% of the division's managed care volume, up from 60% in the first quarter. Home health services have already achieved its full-year goal of 50 preferred payers, with episodic admissions at 81% of the mix and a 18.5% growth in episodic volume. Management highlighted CMS's proposed home health rule, published on July 1, and its finalized hospice rule, published on August 6, as beneficial for stable industry rates. The recent acquisition of Family First Homecare, completed in early June and set for full integration by the end of the fourth quarter, along with guidance raised to over $2.68 billion in revenue and more than $365 million in adjusted EBITDA for the year, further bolstered the outlook.\n\nHowever, the report also highlighted some challenges: private duty services revenue per hour grew by only 1.7% to $44.62, while the segment's cost of revenue per hour increased by 7.8% to $31.74, leading to a per-hour spread of $12.88 as caregiver wage increases filtered through the business. The year-ago quarter in this segment included around $9 million in nonrecurring favorable items, making current growth comparisons more complicated.",
  "summary": null,
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}