Alex Mauricio

There is a detail in Alex Mauricio's LinkedIn posts that tells you everything you need to know about how he runs a 2,500-person healthcare organization. In the same week he visited Bristol Hospice teams across Athens and Atlanta - watching Spring bloom sweep through Georgia - he shouted out Waffle House. Not as a joke. As a point of pride. This is a CEO who still shows up in the field, not to inspect it, but to be in it.

Mauricio took the top job at Bristol Hospice on February 1, 2023, succeeding founder Hyrum Kirton. He came in not as an outsider brought in to professionalize a founder's vision, but as someone who had already spent a year inside Bristol as President and Chief Strategy Officer - and 13 years inside the hospice industry before that. The transition was deliberate, earned, and built on what he calls a simple but non-negotiable principle: culture is the foundation. Everything else follows.

Before Bristol, Mauricio spent six years as Hospice Area Director for Kindred Hospice in Northern California, rising through Area Vice President of Sales. He then joined Suncrest Hospice as President of Sales in 2018, later moving to President of Enterprise Growth. It is a career arc that runs directly through every layer of the business - from field operations to sales strategy to enterprise growth to the top seat. He did not leap to CEO. He climbed through the work.

And it started even earlier than Kindred. Mauricio grew up in home care - not as metaphor, but as biographical fact. That early exposure to patients in their homes, to family members navigating impossible decisions, to caregivers who showed up day after day with no fanfare - that is where his understanding of the work came from. It is also where his impatience with anything that gets between a patient and quality care was forged.

When Mauricio became CEO, Bristol Hospice was already substantial - 76 locations, a private equity backing from Webster Equity Partners, and a reputation as one of the serious players in hospice. What he built from there is a case study in disciplined growth through strategic acquisition.

In February 2025, Bristol acquired St. Agatha Comfort Care in Las Vegas - a hospice with deep community roots and a clinical reputation that aligned with what Mauricio describes as the organization's commitment to the highest standards. He personally framed the deal not as an expansion of Bristol's footprint, but as a support structure for a team entering its next phase. The language was deliberate: not "we acquired them," but "we will combine our talents."

By December 2025, Bristol had moved into Alabama through the DaySpring acquisition - adding offices in Enterprise, Dothan, and Andalusia. Three consecutive years of being named the fastest-growing hospice in the country. Each year, Mauricio's annual kickoff gathering in Florida celebrated not just the numbers but the team that delivered them.

The Bristol model under Mauricio is not simply about adding locations. It is about building specialty programs that respond to gaps in communities - services that did not exist before Bristol showed up. His team consulted extensively with local hospitals, health systems, pediatric physicians, and community leaders before launching new initiatives. The result: programs like COPD-focused respiratory care, dedicated palliative services, and one of the more unexpected announcements in recent hospice news.

In July 2025, Bristol Hospice announced the Little Lights Pediatric Hospice Program in Hawaii - individualized pain and symptom management, respite care, and emotional, spiritual, and grief support for children with life-limiting conditions and their families. It is a service most hospice organizations do not touch. Pediatric end-of-life care is one of the most demanding, most emotionally complex, and most resource-intensive areas in medicine. Bristol built it anyway.

The Hawaii program is also notable for how it came together. Mauricio and his team did not decide in a boardroom that Hawaii needed pediatric hospice. They consulted with hospitals, pediatric physicians, and community organizations across the islands. The program design reflected what those providers said they needed, not what Bristol assumed they wanted. That process - consultation before construction - is a recurring theme in how Mauricio runs the organization.

Bristol Hospice Hawaii had already been recognized with the prestigious 2025 AHA Circle of Life Award from the American Hospital Association before the pediatric program launched. The program was not a pivot or a PR move. It was the next logical step for an organization that had been building clinical credibility in the state for years.

Mauricio appeared on the Last Visit First podcast (Episode 6, November 2025) with host Tom Maxwell for 70 minutes - a conversation about leading hospice at scale, the role of technology, staffing challenges, and what it actually means to be responsible for people's final life chapter. Not a 10-minute interview soundbite. Seventy minutes of substantive discussion, the kind that hospice industry professionals circulate and cite.

He is not the type to position himself as a visionary. When asked what he is proudest of, his answer is his team. When asked what he reads, he deflects to real-world lessons over any single author's framework. When he visits Bristol's Hawaii team, he reflects publicly on what he learned there - not just what he taught them.

At the organization's annual kickoff in Florida, celebrating three consecutive years as the fastest-growing hospice in America, Mauricio's public message was not about market position or funding milestones. It was about the people in the room and what they had built together. There is a consistency to that message across every public communication he has made - whether a podcast appearance, a press release quote, or a LinkedIn post from a Waffle House in Atlanta.

There are CEOs who talk about culture in earnings calls and then run the company like a spreadsheet. Mauricio is not that. When he visits the Hawaii team, he posts about what he learned there. When he swings through Atlanta, it is Georgia in Spring bloom and Waffle House in the same breath. The field trips are real, not staged.

He is relationship-first in his acquisitions - the St. Agatha deal came together partly through mutual connections, and his public framing of it centered on the people at St. Agatha, not Bristol's strategic win. He is community-first in his program development - the pediatric hospice program in Hawaii was built around what the local medical community said it needed, not what looked good in a press release.

When asked about leadership books, he reportedly deflects to real-world stories and observations over any single framework. His LinkedIn is not a brand management exercise. It is someone who actually enjoys visiting his teams and telling people about it.