Interim Rises to Top of Senior Care Category on Franchise 500 List

Interim HealthCare Inc. beat out its competitors to top Entrepreneur’s Franchise 500 Rankings in the senior care category. On last year’s list, Interim ranked below Right at Home, Nurse Next Door, FirstLight Home Care, Visiting Angels and BrightStar Care.

Since 1980, the annual list has evaluated the strength of franchise opportunities in industries across the board. To create this year’s rankings, the magazine reviewed more than 1,000 companies. For each, editors weighed “five pillars”: costs and fees; size and growth; support; brand strength; and financial strength and stability.

Founded in 1966, Sunrise, Florida-based Interim attributes its ability to climb the ranks to its strong fundamentals: providing quality care using top-of-the-line caregivers.

While those qualities have long been paramount for Interim, the franchise giant recently increased its storytelling efforts to better highlight company strengths, Senior Vice President of New Franchise Support Steve Turner told Home Health Care News.

“Our corporate marketing team has focused on supporting our franchise owners and getting our message out to the right people at the right time,” Turner said in an email. “Interim HealthCare has amped up its social media, public relations and content marketing efforts to share the value of our home care services and franchise opportunities.”

Additionally, in 2018, the company introduced new programs to position itself for future growth. Some include programs for dementia, specialized care and a franchise owner network.

The Franchise 500 news comes during a time of transition. On Monday, Interim announced it named a new CEO: Jennifer Sheets, who most recently served as a chief clinical officer and senior executive of clinical operations, innovation, education and quality at Bayada Home Health Care.

While Interim beat out its competitors, home care overall ranked lower on the Franchise 500 list than it did in 2018.

This year, Interim came in at No. 144, as opposed to No. 102 last year. Meanwhile, Right at Home, which led the home care pack in 2018 with an overall ranking of 49, took the No. 211 spot in this year’s rankings.

Overall, 18 home care franchise companies appear on the list this year, as opposed to 16 last year. Other highly ranked home care companies on the 2019 list, which Entrepreneur has now compiled for 40 years, include:

• Visiting Angels (No. 2 in senior care, No. 169 overall)
• BrightStar Care (No. 3 in senior care, No. 184 overall)
• Nurse Next Door (No. 4 in senior care, No. 190 overall)
• Senior Helpers (No. 5 in senior care, No. 192 overall).

The top-ranked 2019 franchise opportunities are McDonald’s, Dunkin’ and Sonic Drive-In.