Last year, the company received the top honor in the quality category of McKnight’s Excellence in Technology Award for its development of a program that provides health-care facility rankings based on resident conditions. Its purpose is to ensure quality control and single out which facilities might need special attention.
Hidden Billionaire
Preston has spent most of his professional life in the health-care industry. With his late brother Winston, he co- founded Hospital Publications Inc., which produced patient booklets and public relations material for hospitals in the U.S.
He started his first convalescent home in 1970 and opened five additional care centers before incorporating Life Care in 1976.
Preston is the sole shareholder of the company, according to a document filed with Tennessee’s Health Services and Development Agency. His stake is valued at $2.3 billion, based on the average enterprise value-to-sales and enterprise value- to-earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization multiples of five publicly traded peers: Brookdale Senior Living Inc., Emeritus Corp., Five Star Quality Care Inc., The Ensign Group Inc. and National HealthCare Corp.
Life Care’s Hunter said the company declined to comment and wouldn’t confirm any of the information in this article.
‘Noble Goal’
Life Care is currently entrenched in a whistle-blower lawsuit filed by employees at facilities in Florida and Tennessee. The suit alleges that Life Care made false claims to Medicare for medically unnecessary rehabilitation therapy services.
“The government is engaging in aggressive efforts to restrict health care costs, which in principle is a noble goal,” the company said in a Nov. 12, 2012, statement. “However, instead of using administrative procedures established for this purpose, the government is relying upon procedural shortcuts and escalating policy disagreements to allegations of fraud.”
A motion to dismiss the suit was denied in March by a federal judge in Chattanooga.