Family Home Care executive Jeff Wiberg and his family have bought the company's assets and have begun operating the Liberty Lake-based home-care agency.

With the acquisition finalized March 25, longtime Spokane-area health care executive Michael Nowling is now fully divested of the company he bought from Empire Health Services in 2001. Nowling had sold the home-health and hospice divisions of the company to Atlanta-based Gentiva Corp. last August. At that time, the company employed a total of about 450 people.

Wiberg declines to disclose the terms of the transaction, but says the home-care operation had about $5 million in revenue last year and has been growing in recent years by between 10 percent and 20 percent annually.

"That could accelerate through an acquisition in the future, but the 10 to 20 percent trajectory is a sweet spot," says Wiberg, who had been Family Home Care's vice president of human resources before taking over as president in recent months as part of the ownership transition.

In all, Family Home Care now employs about 200 people, with an administrative staff of 18 and about 180 nursing aides. In addition to its 5,400-square-foot headquarters in Liberty Lake, at 22820 E. Appleway, the company has a 25-person office in Pullman and a 15-person office in Coeur d'Alene.

Wiberg says all employees have been retained through the ownership change.

He says the company doesn't have any immediate plans to make additional acquisitions or to expand into more markets, but it will look for such opportunities in the future.

"Do I see a need? Yes, there is a need," he says. "The country's infrastructure is not prepared for the demand in need that is coming."

Home care encompasses a broad range of services aimed at helping people—primarily seniors—live independently. Those services can involve light housekeeping, grooming, meal preparation, help with medications, and other kinds of medical assistance. Wiberg says services lumped under the similar term of home health are different from home care in that they typically are short term and paid by Medicare. Home care typically is long term and paid privately.

Nowling, 58, says he sold the home-health and hospice divisions to Gentiva after receiving an unsolicited offer from the large national company. Once that transaction was completed, he says he entered into talks with Wiberg about selling the home-care portion of the business.

Nowling believes the long-term prospects for the home-care industry are strong, but says the transition into the new health-insurance system under Obamacare could make for a bumpy ride during the next three to five years. While he says he wasn't actively marketing the company, it appeared to be better to sell now than to wait three to five years.

"We're riding pretty high," Nowling says. "We accomplished a lot of the goals we set. It seemed like the time was right."

Nowling, who had been president of The Heart Institute of Spokane before acquiring Family Home Care, says he doesn't have any specific plans now that he has sold the company.

"I'm going to try not working for a while, but I'm not convinced it's going to work very well," he says.

Family Home Care has retained him as a consultant, however, and he currently still has an office at the Liberty Lake headquarters.

Wiberg, 33, and his family own Family Home Care through a company they established called Manito Capital LLC. In addition to Wiberg, the principals are his six siblings and his father.

The only relative involved in the company's day-to-day operations at this point is Wiberg's brother-in-law, Dean Roberson, who is the company's vice president of business development.

Others would like to start working at the business, but Wiberg says they've collectively agreed they won't displace employees to give jobs to family members.

Manito Capital is a wholly owned subsidiary of Wiberg Enterprises LLC, a company the family formed two years ago when it started looking for a company to acquire.

When the company was formed, Wiberg says the family broached with Nowling the idea of buying Family Home Care, but that never came to fruition.

He says they looked at companies in other industries, but never found a good fit. Manito Capital is the only holding of Wiberg Enterprises.

"I'm fortunate to be able to buy a company I know so well," he says.

Wiberg started with Family Home Care six years ago, joining the company as its vice president of human resources.

A Central Washington University graduate, he has worked in human resources in the health care field throughout his career.