An Inside Look at 3 of the Fastest-Growing Home Care Providers

Several home care companies are among the fastest growing U.S. companies in 2018, according to Inc. magazine.

The magazine released its annual “Inc. 500” and “Inc. 5000” lists in August.

Collectively, all small businesses and startups on the list amassed revenue of more than $206.2 billion in 2017 and revenue growth that topped out at 74,661%, according to Inc.

Home Health Care News caught up with leadership from three of the home care companies on the list about what strategies they used to drive growth and possible challenges ahead.

24Hr Home Care invested in partnerships

The partnerships 24Hr HomeCare has been involved in and continues to expand upon are a huge part of its success, Ryan Iwamoto, chief marketing officer and co-founder, told HHCN.

“We worked with Cedars-Sinai and did a pilot with them called Care Extenders, where we provided non-clinical caregivers to help extend the bandwidth of Cedars-Sinai’s ambulatory care management team,” Iwamoto said. “So, the thought was instead of investing more on hiring nurse practitioners or more clinical staff, can they leverage non-clinical caregivers to help them do home visits and check-ins with some of their high-risk patients.”

The pilot went well and now the program is permanent at Cedar-Sinai, Iwamoto added.

El Segundo, California-based 24Hr HomeCare is a private duty in-home care company that served about 5,000 private pay clients in 2017 across its offices in California, Arizona and Texas. The company offers companionship, transportation and meal preparation help and employed nearly 200 professionals in offices and 7,000 caregivers in 2017.

Los Angeles-based Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is a part of the Cedars-Sinai Health System. The system serves more than 1 million people each year in over 40 locations with more than 4,500 physicians and nurses.

24hr HomeCare also provides a service called RideWith24 that has driven growth for the company. It is a partnership with Uber and Lyft that connects seniors with the ridesharing apps through a phone call. The service has grown to a few thousand rides a month, Iwamoto said. Nearly 20 hospitals including UCLA Health and Cedars-Sinai have partnered with the company to transport patients home following a discharge.

24Hr HomeCare has endeavored to expand its footprint over the last few years too, Iwamoto said. The company launched four locations in Southern California in 2017, in order to create more density in the areas the company operates in.

24Hr HomeCare’s revenue was about $71.3 million in 2017. Its three-year growth mark is 85%, giving the company the No. 4,108 spot on the Inc. 5000 list. This is the company’s sixth time on the list, which puts the company in the Inc. Hall of Fame.

The people that work at the company are also a big part of growth, Iwamoto said.

“We have very motivated, competitive yet caring people that work on our team,” Iwamoto said. “We invested a lot in our training and development of not only our caregivers but our internal staff. We have partnered with experts in the field to provide different sorts of training, including Alzheimer’s and dementia training.”

In the future, 24Hr HomeCare plans to explore other services similar to RideWith24, further expand its footprint with more locations across current and new markets, and is looking to partner with Medicare Advantage plans.

Client satisfaction paramount at FirstLight Home Care

“Our whole premise was to set FirstLight apart with an added focus on client satisfaction measurement,” Jeff Bevis, CEO at FirstLight Home Care, told HHCN. “We measure client satisfaction in every office, every quarter.”

The company, as of Aug. 31, has 94.3% client satisfaction year to date across all its offices.

Cincinnati-based FirstLight Home Care is a home care company that provides 100,000 hours per week of companion, personal and dementia care services to nearly 4,800 clients across more than 254 locations in 34 states. The company employs nearly 4,700 caregivers.

FirstLight is also focused on caregiver retention in order to drive growth.

“We are very bullish on how we recruit, hire, train and retain caregivers so we are able to maintain a higher caregiver retention rate and lower caregiver turnover,” Bevis said. “Our turnover runs less than 20%. We see that as a direct correlation to our growth and our success.”

FirstLight Home Care’s revenue was about $6.6 million in 2017. Its three-year growth mark is 146%, giving the company the No. 2,827 spot on the Inc. 5000 list. This is the company’s fourth time on the list.

“Our technology has set us a part from day one, as well, but especially the last several years as we added new planks to our platform that help our offices maintain efficiency [and] productivity,” Bevis said. “We wanted to make sure we stayed ahead of the industry and be on the leading edge of the use of technology all across the home care industry. It has enabled us to better position ourselves for more third-party payer opportunities with long-term care insurance companies, VA, state Medicaid waivers — more non-traditional [payers] in the private duty, private pay sector.”

The company is tracking the growth for this year to be about 26%, Bevis said. FirstLight expects to double in size in the next three years and see growth in third-party payers, he added.

Virginia Home Care Services touts co-founder relationship 

Vienna, Virginia-based Virginia Home Care Services is a home care provider offering services like private duty, companion and respite care to 110 clients in Northern Virginia. The company employs about 150 staff members. Virginia Home Care Services hopes to expand by adding skilled care early next year.

Said Aliyev, president at Virginia Home Care Services, told HHCN that the relationship he has with his co-founder, Roustam Aliverdi, is a key piece of the company’s success.

“I think we complement each other in the way that we run the company and the things that we are good at,” Aliyev said. “This is the type of business where you need a partner. I think in most businesses, it’s difficult to do everything on your own, especially where it is a complicated business, which I think home care is. I think there has to be an individual that is a visionary and there has to be an individual that is an implementor.”

Aliverdi is the vice president of Virginia Home Care Services.

Virginia Home Care Services’ revenue was about $3.6 million in 2017. Its three-year growth mark is 142%, giving the company the No. 2,890 spot on the Inc. 5000 list. This is the company’s second time on the list.

“We do a lot of bootstrap marketing,” Aliyev added. “We try to get in front of case managers and other health care professionals is how we try to market our services. I think that has helped us quite a bit.”

Virginia Home Care Services also has unofficial partnerships with other home care companies, mainly ones that don’t offer the services they do, so they can recommend each other, Aliyev added.

One of the challenges to running a home care company is handling the regulation changes, Aliyev said. His company tries to be creative and adapt efficiently to the changes as they come.

Written by Kaitlyn Mattson