A Family Tradition of Caring

Saad Healthcare was founded to provide full-service and high-quality care to patients and clients in their homes, in a comprehensive, compassionate, professional, and cost-effective manner, in order to restore, maintain, and promote good health and minimize the negative effects of illness and disability. Because ours is a legacy given to us by a previous generation who was dedicated to the delivery of high-quality healthcare and who made sacrifices to that end, we have a special obligation to continue to place the highest value on excellence in all we do. Our aim is to make our slogan – “A family tradition of caring” – an ongoing reality.

Company History

Our founders, John and Dorothy Saad, met in the military during World War II. John Saad was the son of immigrants from Lebanon living in Mobile, Alabama and Dorothy Sturges was the daughter of silver miner in the mountains of North Carolina who at sixteen left home to be a registered nurse in Baltimore Maryland. They both served our country well in the European theater until the war ended in 1945. After the war, John brought his new bride back to the south in Mobile. Over the next few years, in addition to having seven children, they worked multiple jobs each to make ends meet. Dorothy Saad worked in many nursing capacities in local hospitals and the local Visiting Nursing Association (VNA). John Saad retired from active duty to serve the National Guard as a Colonel and worked at the local Air Force base as a civilian manager. Dorothy Saad began one of the first nursing homes in Mobile as its first Director of Nurses and then in 1966, they had an opportunity to start up a new skilled nursing facility called Heritage Nursing and Convalescent Center, a 174-bed total-care facility. Dorothy Saad worked as the head nurse and John Saad as Administrator in the facility.

In 1982, an opportunity arose to purchase a durable medical equipment company and a 501-C3 home healthcare company, our first venture into the home health area. The entities had a certificate of need to operate as a home health agency in a four-county service area in South Alabama. Thus, this acquisition provided the opportunity to enter the home health care business, and would later become our home base called Saad Healthcare Services. In 1983, Saad Nursing Service was organized as a personal care and nursing agency and began providing companion, personal care and private duty nursing to residents in skilled nursing facilities and home throughout the Gulf Coast.

A few years later, Saad Healthcare developed the second Hospice component along the Gulf Coast, providing palliative services and hospice care to residents in facilities and in their home. The hospice concept was in it infancy and Saad Healthcare was heavily involved in its development locally, statewide and nationally.

In 1986, the Saad family developed a retirement community under the concept of continuum-of-care facility where it provided independent living apartments, assisted living, skilled nursing care and specially care for those suffering with Alzheimer’s diseases. This facility was a long time dream and goal of the Saad family and all components were completed in 1991. Also in 1986, all aspects of the growing healthcare organization were consolidated into a home office. As a result, an eight county home health agency based in Biloxi Mississippi was purchased through an arrangement with the Center for Medicare and Medicaid that was then called the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA). With a certificate of need for eight counties, Saad Healthcare was enabled to provide services throughout the Gulf Coast.