After successful stints in athletics and the pharmaceutical industry, Patrick T. Mitchell began pursuing better models of delivering health care. Twenty years later, The Carpenter Health Network is a leader throughout the Gulf Coast region in providing a continuum of care that meets patients’ changing needs over time through nursing, home care, hospice, rehabilitation care and more.
In 2002, he opened St. Joseph Hospice with the mission of providing peace, comfort, and dignity to those facing terminal illness. Named for the patron saint of a peaceful death, St. Joseph Hospice is nondenominational and never denies care regardless of patients’ ability to pay.
In 2006, he formed STAT Home Health, leading to Louisiana’s first AIM Palliative Home Health Program that helps seriously ill patients who lack coordinated hospital, home health and hospice care. In 2013, he created Homedica to improve the patient experience and reducing hospitalizations by enabling physicians and mid-level care providers to make house calls.
The Carpenter Health Network was created in 2014 as the parent company of St. Joseph Hospice and its sister companies, which also includes The Carpenter House, STAT Home Health, AIM Palliative Home Health, Sage Rehabilitation Hospital, and Outpatient Services, Sage Specialty Hospital, Capitol House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, Homedica HouseCalls, and Companion Home Care. The healthcare network serves markets in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, and Florida.
“The Carpenter Health Network is focused on meeting the needs of aging patients in a way that offers the dignity and comfort of receiving care in their own homes,” Mitchell says. “We want to help shape the future of the health care delivery system by minimizing global costs while maximizing patient outcomes.”
A graduate of the University of Louisiana-Monroe, Mitchell and his wife, Cathy, were married in 1984. They have two children, a son-in-law, and three grandchildren.