For Founder and President Richard Pellerin, Century Rehabilitation’s success can be summed up in one word—relationships.
AT A GLANCE
Top executives: Richard Pellerin, President; Tammy Tuminaro, CEO
Phone: 225.761.2222
Address: 4703 Bluebonnet Blvd., Baton Rouge, LA 70809
Website: centuryrehab.com
“We’re very focused on relationships because they go a long way,” he says. “There’s a dollars and cents aspect of the business, there’s the patient aspect to the business, there’s a clinical aspect, and through all of those, you’ve got to have relationships.”
Pellerin launched the company in 1999 because he saw healthcare facilities struggling to find skilled therapists and to keep up with constantly changing reimbursement processes.
In 2023, Century Rehab provides contract physical, occupational, and speech therapy management services for long-term healthcare and assisted living facilities. The company also provides healthcare recruiting and consulting services that assist clients in filling vacant job positions, training staff members, and staying up-to-date on best practices for their facilities.
“It’s not any kind of rocket science,” Pellerin says. “It’s really about how you take care of your staff, how you take care of patients, and how you take care of the relationships with the clients.”
There is perhaps no better example of Pellerin’s talent for nurturing relationships than the longevity of Century Rehab’s staff, says Chief Executive Officer Tammy Tuminaro, who herself has been employed by the company for 20 years. She was appointed CEO in 2019.
“We don’t sell a product. Our commodity is people,” Tuminaro says. “And we feel very strongly that if we treat our people well … if we value them … then they will be loyal to us and will work very hard for us.”
Adaptability is another key tenet of Century Rehab’s culture. The COVID-19 pandemic changed the face of the healthcare industry, exacerbating an existing healthcare worker shortage for long-term care facilities. Company executives quickly realized if Century Rehab didn’t adapt to those changes, it would be left behind.
With 24 years of experience in healthcare recruitment, it was an easy decision to expand the recruiting portion of the business—to great success, Pellerin says. He estimates that the recruitment portion of the business has exploded by approximately 200 percent since the decision was made to expand, simply due to the demand.
“Our clients came to us and said, ‘We need help recruiting. What can you guys do? You’re there to help us,’” he says. “That was the seed basically for us to take recruiting outside of just Century Rehab.”
The secret to Century Rehab’s recruiting success, Tuminaro says, is an outstanding process and model the company applies to each client’s hiring woes. Since Century Rehab’s recruiting department is used to the requirements of a supply and demand industry, it has always been innovative in its hiring approaches. Now, it’s just a matter of expanding that expertise to fill positions within long-term healthcare facilities, from executives and nurses to CNAs and dietary staff members.
“We have great recruiters. We just have a very solid process, and we always follow it,” Tuminaro says. “Now we may tweak our process for the needs of the client. But once we land on what works for a particular client, we follow that, and we follow each candidate. We make them feel valued.”
Century Rehab executives also recognize that innovative technology brings added value to existing clients. A recent partnership with Prime Care Technologies produced the industry’s first therapy-to-clinical discrepancy tracker—the primeVIEW Century PLUS module. The proprietary software compares patient electronic medical record (EMR) data from both treating therapists and the facility where the patient is housed, flagging any discrepancies between the data sets.
“While it’s not a reimbursement tool, it is a tool that will alert nursing and therapy to have a discussion to ensure that we are getting the most accurate assessment of the resident in order to provide the best plan of care in order to obtain the best outcomes,” Tuminaro says.
Pellerin says that while his goal has never been to become the biggest contract physical therapy company, his ambition is simply to be the best.
“The best means helping you maintain your customer relationships and also your employee relationships,” he says. “If my business keeps doing right now what it’s doing and we have steady growth, I’m a happy man.”
