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Journey Skilled Nursing Expansion 2025: CEO Bernie McGuinness Shares the Vision
Journey Skilled Nursing’s expansion in 2025 is drawing national attention — and for good reason. Skilled Nursing News recently sat down with CEO Bernie McGuinness for an in-depth interview covering how Journey was built, what the regional cluster strategy actually looks like in practice, and what the organization is focused on in the year ahead.
The conversation starts with Journey’s foundation. Since launching, the Indiana-based company has grown to 22 facilities across six states in just under a year — a rare accomplishment in a sector known for tight margins, complex regulations, and significant operational demands.
That growth hasn’t been random. McGuinness describes a deliberate, market-by-market approach built around geographic density — establishing clusters of facilities close enough together to share staff, referral relationships, and operational expertise. Georgia and Kentucky are currently Journey’s two largest regional cluster markets.
“We’re trying to build out regions in which we can have efficiency and shared staffing resources, relationships with managed care organizations, really become experts at state-operated Medicaid systems,” McGuinness told Skilled Nursing News.
The interview also gets into what it genuinely takes to start a skilled nursing organization from scratch — something McGuinness describes as both overwhelming and deeply personal.
“I think you have to have a passion for it. This is all I’ve done since I was 19. This is my life,” he said.
On the operations side, McGuinness points to meaningful early wins — most notably Journey’s push to eliminate agency labor entirely. At the time of acquisition, 20 of Journey’s 22 buildings were running at least 30% agency staffing. By the end of Q1 2025, the goal was to be fully agency-free — a direct reflection of Journey’s culture and the Care Team members who make it possible.
Looking ahead, the focus for 2025 is deliberate and grounded: stabilize existing locations, complete remodeling and capital improvement projects already underway, and continue investing in staffing and workforce development before pursuing the next wave of acquisitions.
“We’re going to focus on the basics right now: staffing, workforce development, quality. You’re going to see a lot of stabilization and delivering of the promises we made to the local communities, to the care team members, to the building leadership that has joined Journey over the last year,” McGuinness said.
It’s an honest, clear-eyed look at what Journey Skilled Nursing’s expansion in 2025 is really built on — and what makes it sustainable for the long run.