Experience and Vision

Brian is a natural at finding, negotiating and closing deals. But not just any deals — the right deals. Deals in which everyone walking away from the closing table is a winner.

Sometimes that’s thanks to luck. Most of the time, it’s because there was a savvy negotiator behind the scenes who found the right deal at the right time. That’s Brian.

He sees things others can’t — like why a small business in an out-of-the-way market might be a key acquisition for a multi-million-dollar healthcare company. Or why regulatory conditions in a particular state make a deal that might not look that great today a real winner over time.

Brian has more than two decades of experience working in the healthcare space, identifying and negotiating acquisitions for national companies like Almost Family, overseeing its largest acquisition to date, and ResCare, Inc. (now BrightSpring), growing it to a Fortune 1000 company. Then he owned a national healthcare mergers and acquisitions advisory company that consistently closed 40-50 transactions annually.

With his legal background, he’s skilled at parsing through proposed payment and program changes. He stays on top of current I/DD rate environments and opportunities and state-specific personal care rates and programs, so even if you’re not looking to sell your healthcare business right now, he’d be happy to talk with you about the markets and what’s ahead for your industry.

With a mergers and acquisitions career spanning more than four decades – and 30 years spent focusing solely on home health transactions – Don Cummins is recognized as one of the most influential leaders in the home care and hospice industry.

Don began his career as a licensed pharmacist after graduating from Drake University. He added management experience while working for national drug store chain Walgreens, leading several of the company’s stores in the Chicago area. Seeking an opportunity to grow his expertise, Don left Walgreens to become part-owner and president of a mid-sized Chicago manufacturing company for nearly a decade.

In 1983, Don entered the field of mergers and acquisitions, founding Cummins & Associates, a general business brokerage and M&A firm based in Florida. Under his leadership, the firm oversaw the sale of hundreds of businesses, ranging from small, local operations to large multi-state operations. In 1996, Don saw an opportunity to use his transactional skills in the growing healthcare industry. He first joined Telesis, a national mergers and acquisitions firm that specialized in mid-market home care transactions, before eventually moving on to join the Braff Group.

In 2001, Don founded healthcare mergers and acquisitions firm Stoneridge Partners. He grew the company into a nationally recognized group of M&A experts before selling it in 2015 to spend more time with his wife, Pam, and their family. Since the sale, he has stayed active in the field, continuing to offer advisory services on a limited basis thanks to his vast expertise and far-reaching list of industry contacts. But the chance to join forces with a rising firm and former colleagues proved hard to resist, and Don joined Ascend Healthcare Advisors as our Senior Advisor in 2025.