With these challenges come opportunities as well. In a recent Home Health Care News webinar, Impactful Sales & Marketing Strategies for Home Health and Home Care Providers, two companies discussed the issues they are facing and how they are working to solve them.

Linn Free, senior vice president of operations at the Omaha, Nebraska-based Home Instead, emphasized the importance of having the right home care consultants in the company and a better understanding of referral partner relationships.

“We want to continue to build a strong relationship with referral partners,” Free told Home Health Care News. “We really want to show up more holistically and be a resource earlier in the process versus only being there in a time of distress.”

Free emphasized that focusing on building relationships and leveraging technology are the greatest opportunities for growth amid staffing shortages.

“We’re working on accessibility for all,” Free said. “We’re making the application process easier to navigate for care professionals. We have a franchise network of over 460 owners. We are focusing on listening and understanding their needs. Care professionals are one of our greatest opportunities to continue to grow the business.”

Jeremy Collier, vice president of strategic initiatives and payer innovation at LTM Group in Dayton, Ohio, suggested that building relationships is all about setting yourself apart from others in the industry.

“First, you get their attention,” he said. “We lean too much on email these days. If we’re not going to email, let’s write a handwritten note. Let’s coordinate so we can have non-skilled services with skilled services. Take the time to do something different. That will set you apart from the competition.”

Both Free and Collier agreed that developing positive referral relationships requires time and effort. However, when it comes to franchisees, a local approach is essential.

Free said that Home Instead franchisees generally live in the communities they serve and understand those communities better than anyone else. They are responsible for building and nurturing relationships with their referral partners, but the company still provides support.

“Our operations team is there to support them with tools, processes, and resources, removing friction to build more impactful relationships,” he said. “We believe in freedom within a framework. We understand one size does not fit all. We shift our sales and marketing to a more customized perspective. We try to understand the local environment to then understand where [franchisees] should focus their time and energy.”

Free said that the company is using a new tool that enables each franchisee to view all referral sources within their territory. This helps them to better maintain relationships and reconnect with contacts they haven’t engaged with recently.

“We’re leveraging AI to help us provide resources to owners and their teams, enabling them to generate referrals more effectively and say yes more often,” Free explained. “Some owners are tech enthusiasts, and some are tech reluctant. It is up to our team to see where owners are in their journey and help them ease that on-ramp with new technology. It’s one thing to talk about tech, but you need to show them the ‘why’ when asking them to trust us.”

Sales-minded growth

The home care industry is known for its compassionate nature, which can make it challenging for people in this field to prioritize sales. However, Free suggested that having dedicated sales professionals is ultimately better for the clients.

“Having that sales mindset helps us expand our capacity to care,” he said. “We want to have that compassion and build strong relationships, but we want to help others experience what we can do on their behalf, making their lives easier and allowing them to remain in their homes longer.”

Collier said that his company is closely monitoring the sales pipeline. They concentrate on comparing the incoming sales with the number of clinicians available in a specific area. This approach helps the company make informed decisions about recruitment and stay ahead of the demand to prevent any slowdown in the sales process. However, he also emphasized that retention is important.

“Retaining staff, patients and referral sources is a big thing for us,” Collier said. “It’s important to follow up after care starts and let [referral sources] know how things are going. This allows you to thank them again and tell them what communities you serve. By explaining to the patient and family what our services look like and what we offer before the patient is discharged, it is easier to retain the patient. A face-to-face visit is so important when care starts. Reach out to the family and explain the services, how it’s paid for and what you’re there to do.”

Collier and Free said that there are untapped opportunities in the in-home care space that could be used to increase sales.

Collier said his focus is to help more home-based care agencies nationwide.

“Be more sophisticated with partnerships,” he said. “Reach out and share contacts with those larger than you. We have a real opportunity to reach out and educate people on what home care is really about.”

Free said franchisees must prioritize growth by leveraging the brand’s history, experience and technology to sustain and expand their presence in both business and communities.

“It is important to take pride in what we do and invest in our owners, their teams and our care professionals,” he said. “One of the biggest barriers to growth is having enough staff and being able to say yes to more opportunities. Everything is about elevating the care our clients get and applying consistency.”

The post How Home-Based Care Providers Up The Ante With Sales And Marketing Strategies appeared first on Home Health Care News.

Three years after Honor acquired Home Instead, its goal is not to grow through franchise expansion or acquisition. Instead, it’s trying to find ways for current locations to double, triple and quadruple their current censuses.

In part, it plans to open up that opportunity through advanced technology, including artificial intelligence.

During a recent long and wide-ranging conversation with Honor CEO Seth Sternberg, we talked about how exactly the company would take these forward-facing tools, apply them to home care and successfully balloon home care owners’ businesses.

“We have no plan around opening 100 new offices or 1,000 new offices, right? The footprint is pretty good,” Sternberg told me. “The thing that we need to do is give the tools to our owners to be able to double, triple, quadruple their existing businesses. That looks like the right owners, with the right tool sets, that let them serve much larger swaths of the market.”

In 2024, Home Health Care News has finally cut through some of the noise around AI. We’ve got providers on the record talking about what pain points, specifically, they are planning to attack with AI solutions.

The conversation with Sternberg was a continuation of that.

Now that Honor and Home Instead franchisees are on better terms, there’s a level of excitement from each party on what will come next.

What comes next, particularly around AI, is the topic of this week’s exclusive, members-only HHCN+ Update.

Home Instead’s growth

Home Instead has over 1,100 locations across the world, and the largest home care footprint in the U.S.

Even then, it owns just about 5% of the market.

“Traditionally, home care has simply not scaled on a location by location basis, it just has never happened,” Sternberg said. “Since we started Honor, the whole theory was that you could leverage technology to actually enable locations to scale with high quality, to break the barriers that had always kept this to a completely fragmented industry.”

Leading up to the turn of the decade, prior to 2020, AI was generally thought of as a synonym for machine learning – “using information from the past to predict the future,” Sternberg said.

Now, generative AI – which ChatGPT utilizes, for instance – has opened up more doors when it comes to AI application.

“The wave of technology that’s coming around creating just better client experiences, better employment experiences – it’s just going to be massive,” Sternberg said. “And the level of technology investment into industries that previously have not had that kind of investment, that’s effectively going to shock everyone. Because generative AI uniquely applies to hyper human situations.”

The home care industry is no doubt one of those that has not been on the cutting edge of technology over the years, a factor that could have played a role in the friction between Honor and Home Instead franchisees post-acquisition.

Honor wants to change that now, though.

“We’re really focused on making sure that we stay ahead of the technology curve that’s happening,” Sternberg continued. “And I would argue that everyone else in home care has to be doing the same with their businesses, too. If they’re not fundamentally focused on the entire transformation of their business because of where technology is and where it’s going, they should be.”

Technology generally makes services “better” and “cheaper,” according to Sternberg.

After home care billing rates skyrocketed during COVID-19, home care leaders have been scrambling to mitigate the consequences of that.

Agencies can charge more to pass the costs onto the client, but that could end up in a loss of market share, and also many Americans with no place to go for home care. The ones that can’t pay out of pocket, but don’t qualify for Medicaid’s home- and community-based services.

“To solve all the myriad challenges to deliver home care cheaper is a very, very deep tech problem,” Sternberg said. “But it’s one that I’m definitely very excited about. And I think that you can use the kind of technology that we build to do [solve that].”

The goal is to create better jobs and lower costs for services.

On top of that, in a franchise system, you have to reach those goals without decreasing owners’ bottom lines.

Applying AI

Sternberg told me that Honor has 22 distinct AI algorithms working in the Home Instead network right now, all of which interface with each other.

I asked him if he thought that staffing would be the No. 1 pain point AI would address in home care. Not exactly, he explained.

Because health care – and home care – are so complicated, there are pain points everywhere. One client’s issue with a provider could be traceable to a back-office error completely off the radar. In essence, every issue creates another one. And that’s why viewing staffing in a silo is as problematic as addressing a patient’s care in a siloed manner.

“I think, unfortunately, technology has to solve all the problems, and they are married,” Sternberg said. “We have distinct systems solving discrete problems. And then they kind of ladder up, so that a care pro ends up liking their job more, and then provides better care to a client.”

One tool compares franchise owners’ businesses to the rest of the network – on outcomes, recruiting, retention and other measures. Another finds every referral source within a market, and suggests which ones the owner should get in touch with. A similar tool finds where potential new caregivers are in that market.

These are also self-learning tools, which ideally improve the more they are put to use.

“We have a team that talks to [franchisees] and says, ‘Hey, we see this happening in your business, this tool is the one you really need to dive in on now,’” Sternberg said. “This tool is the next to enable you to grow even faster. It’s very much about understanding [each] business uniquely.”

The post Where Honor, Home Instead Want AI To Take Home Care appeared first on Home Health Care News.

After Honor acquired Home Instead in 2021, many Home Instead franchisees were not sold on the strategic direction they were given. They believed Honor’s model lacked a “proof of concept,” and were unwilling to alter operations to appease their new parent organization.

But, over the last few years, a lot of the friction between Honor and Home Instead franchisees has eroded.

Bill Mishkin, a Home Instead franchise owner with an agency in Melrose, Massachusetts, was one of the strongest voices advocating against looming changes coming by way of Honor. He helmed the Independent Association of Home Instead Franchisees, which was made up by at least 253 owners and 325 franchise locations.

There were a handful of core gripes that Mishkin and other franchisees had, much of which had to do with Honor’s technological ethos.

“Technology companies want things to fit into a box,” Mishkin told Home Health Care News in 2022. “They want specific numbers of hours. They want specific duties that people need to perform. And our client care can change day to day and hour to hour. And we’re really afraid of losing that most-important high touch.”

Home Instead is the largest home care franchise in the U.S. Its network includes over 1,100 locations across 13 countries, as well as more than 100,000 caregivers. On its end, Honor is a home care technology company that has raised hundreds of millions since its founding in 2014.

In June of 2023, Honor also laid off 15% of Home Instead’s HQ staff, including many long-time Home Instead employees. Nearly two years after the acquisition, the turbulence remained.

Of late, a few moves from Home Instead – and likely years of building trust with hundreds of franchisees – have begun to pay off, however.

Mishkin told HHCN that recent developments have turned a Northeastern cynic like himself into an optimist regarding the future of the Home Instead brand under Honor.

“One thing that a lot of us owners really saw is that Honor has brought Home Instead some incredibly bright and talented people, whether from Amazon or people with strong franchise experience,” he said. “The recent discussion seminars we’ve had are really informative and really next-level compared to what we’ve seen from HQ in the past. I was really impressed. And I’m from the Northeast, I’m cynical by nature.”

Those new additions to the Honor/Home Instead team came shortly after the aforementioned layoffs, and included: Linn Free, who was named senior vice president of operations at Home Instead; Stefan Haney, who was named senior vice president of growth technology; and Mark Privett, who was named vice president of design.

Free comes from Yum Brands (NYSE: YUM), where he led KFC Global, while Haney and Privett come from Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN).

Additionally, Mishkin said that Honor has now been “getting their hands dirty,” bouncing around from office to office to ensure Home Instead owners’ voices are heard.

“They’re seeing what goes on in offices, they’re visiting offices, they’re going into homes,” he said. “I think that the realization is that they just can’t come and give you ideas, they need to understand what the business is and why it’s so challenging. And now I think they’ve done a pretty good job of taking that deep dive.”

Honor CEO on the turnaround

Honor CEO Seth Sternberg agrees with Mishkin’s sentiment. He thinks that the turnaround has come from “showing” and not just “telling.”

He also believes that Honor still had a lot to learn about the Home Instead brand, even after the extensive due diligence it conducted prior to the acquisition.

“When we initially bought Home Instead, we obviously did due diligence, but we didn’t know all the things,” Sternberg recently told HHCN. “As we came to understand the actual state of the business – from the perspective of people who run businesses with a lot of data and processing technology – there was just some pretty fundamental blocking and tackling that we felt we had to put in place just to literally understand where things were at, to even have the data flows to be able to analyze what has happened. And to the franchisees, that doesn’t feel like progress. That feels like, ‘Time is passing, and I’m not seeing anything.’”

That blocking and tackling took “about a year,” according to Sternberg. Then it took additional time to instrument the business, to start receiving the information it needed. After that, it was finally time to create solutions and tools that will help fix problems that were recognized.

“I think what the owners have now seen, because we finally had enough time to do it all, is tools released that they just never knew they needed,” Sternberg said. “But now that they have them, they’re like, ‘Wow, that’s amazing. That actually materially improves my life, and improves my business as a franchisee.’ That’s really the biggest thing. Instead of telling them what we are going to do, franchisees are now seeing what we are actually releasing to them. And that’s just a huge difference.”

The recognizable payoff helps, and so does the fact that Mishkin and and other franchisees have met with Honor leaders to get on better terms.

Mishkin, for one, believes that data becoming more visible – and more actionable – will be a game changer.

“They keep coming up with more stuff, and more data for us to be able to work with,” he said. “And to be able to access it in a much easier format than what we’ve seen in the past. The hope is to have one dashboard where you can find all of your metrics in one place. They’re really working towards that. They’re definitely minimizing the amount of work that we have to do to get some of this information now, which is great.”

One example is the dashboards and reports that Honor is driving through Salesforce, which is the platform that most Home Instead franchisees are on.

Ultimately, Mishkin and Sternberg both believe that the Home Instead-Honor partnership has a chance at developing new solutions to the aging problem in the U.S. – ones that don’t exist today.

“We have no plan around opening 100 new offices or 1,000 new offices, right? The footprint is pretty good,” Sternberg said. “The thing that we need to do is give the tools to our owners to be able to double, triple, quadruple their existing businesses. That looks like the right owners, with the right tool sets, that let them serve much larger swaths of the market.”

The post ‘Showing, Not Telling’: How Honor Has Repaired Its Relationship With Home Instead Franchisees appeared first on Home Health Care News.

Thanks to impactful, large-scale transactions over the last decade, the collective face of home-based care has changed forever.

Traditional providers in both home health care and personal home care have merged. Payers became involved in the home-based care space like never before. Of late, retailers have too.

But it’s often easy to forget how the current landscape became what it is.

Below, Home Health Care News takes a look at some of the most important and impactful deals in home-based care over the last decade – deals that explain, in part, where the home health and home care industries are today.

‘Big time’ provider deals

This past decade’s first blockbuster remained one of the most impactful throughout the last 10 years.

In 2014, April Anthony’s Encompass Home Health & Hospice was acquired by HealthSouth Corporation for $750 million. HealthSouth took a swing at home health and hospice, merging an in-patient facility business with a post-acute care business.

Four years later, HealthSouth would rebrand completely, taking on the home health and hospice entity’s name. Encompass Health Corp. (NYSE: EHC) still exists today, but is again without post-acute care capabilities.

The HealthSouth-Encompass deal is like a few other deals in home health care, in that it set off a domino effect and a winding life cycle of a home health entity.

Anthony left Encompass Health in 2021, and after her home health and hospice company operated as a segment within the larger organization for nearly a decade, Encompass Home Health & Hospice was spun off into its own public company: Enhabit Inc. (NYSE: EHAB).

That happened in 2022, and two years later, Enhabit may land in the hands of a different owner after it concludes its own strategic review. Anthony now runs VitalCaring, which is backed by her, The Vistria Group and Nautic Partners.

Over the decade, larger health care organizations like Encompass Health have also bundled up services, and also unbundled them.

For instance, Brookdale Senior Living (NYSE: BKD) had one of the largest home health footprints for a long time. After COVID-19 woes, however, it offloaded that to a health system eager to get into home health care: HCA Healthcare (NYSE: HCA). LHC Group would later acquire some of the assets jointly owned by Brookdale and HCA Healthcare.

Ascension Health, too, teamed up with TowerBrook to buy the home health and hospice provider Compassus in 2019.

A theme that has been a mainstay, and will likely remain a mainstay, is health systems changing course on their strategic planning – and deciding whether to own home health care themselves or focus on core operations and partner with home health care instead.

“You’re seeing a lot of these facility-based providers divesting or spinning off assets,” Chaz Bauer, director at Fifth Third Securities, told Home Health Care News. “They realize they have fundamentally two different businesses. They’re very related and intertwined. But fundamentally, you have these facility-based businesses that are very centralized models, very capital intensive. Whereas home-based care businesses, they’re very decentralized; they’re very capital-light. Part of the motivation there – in unbundling – is they can unlock value for their shareholders by splitting those businesses.”

But then there’s the M&A that has come from within the home health sector itself.

For instance, “the merger of equals” that turned LHC Group into a true home-based care powerhouse.

In late 2017, LHC Group agreed to merge with Almost Family in a $2.4 billion transaction. A straight line can be drawn from that deal to UnitedHealth Group’s (NYSE: UNH) acquisition of LHC Group, which was finalized in 2023.

LHC Group and Almost Family’s merger is not an anomaly, either. Not long after, Great Lakes Caring, National Home Health Care and Jordan Health Services combined in a three-way merger to create another one of the largest home health companies in the U.S.: Elara Caring.

That deal was powered by the PE firms Blue Wolf Capital Partners and Kelso & Company.

PE money in home-based care has turned a lot of sizable providers into powerhouses. The aforementioned PE firms – Blue Wolf, Kelso, Vistria and Nautic – have all played a part in that, in the transactions mentioned already and otherwise.

That will also continue, particularly as some of the holding periods of the largest companies turn over. There’s also a chance, however, that PE firms direct more attention to other parts of home-based care – like personal care – given the uncertainty surrounding home health payment rates.

In home care, Vistria and Centerbridge Partners uplifted Help at Home, turning it into one of the largest providers of home- and community-based services (HCBS) in the country.

Waud Capital recently acquired the large home care franchise Senior Helpers. Wellspring Capital Management acquired Interim HealthCare’s parent company Caring Brands International in 2021. Last September, The Halifax Group acquired Comfort Keepers from Sodexo.

PE has always been involved in home care. Bain Capital’s 2018 creation of Arosa, one of the largest non-franchised home care companies in the country, is one past example.

In the future, it’ll be interesting to see if PE will drive more large-scale, impactful deals like it has in home health care over the last decade.

Payers enter the fold

Any commentary on the biggest deals in home-based care over the last decade needs to note increased payer involvement.

Enter Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM).

When people think of the company’s home-based care investments, most go straight to its takeover of Kindred at Home.

But let’s take a step out of the last decade, just for a second.

In 2011, Humana acquired the home-based care provider SeniorBridge, which was doing just $72 million in annual revenue at the time. When that deal was announced, it was not exactly frontpage news. But one could argue that kickstarted a chain of investments that changed the M&A landscape in home-based care forever.

“SeniorBridge fills a growing market need and is consistent with Humana’s focus on delivering clinical care for seniors in their homes,” Michael B. McCallister, Humana’s chairman and CEO at the time, said in a statement. “Acquiring SeniorBridge will immediately expand Humana’s existing clinical capabilities with the addition of SeniorBridge’s national network of 1,500 care managers. The company does a terrific job of reducing hospital readmissions and emergency-room utilization, all while helping seniors achieve lifelong well-being.”

Humana’s home-based care thesis was already there, but the SeniorBridge deal was likely the deal that set the stage for what eventually became CenterWell.

“The deal was a game changer. I was initially surprised by the size of the transaction. It was pretty small by Humana standards,” Mertz Taggart Managing Partner Cory Mertz told HHCN. “It didn’t take long for Humana to tout the savings SeniorBridge created for their membership, saving it billions of dollars within the first couple years of the deal, by keeping their members at home and out of the hospital.”

Nearly 13 years later, Humana is one of the largest home health providers in the country through CenterWell Home Health.

The company, with the help of the PE firms TPG Capital and Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe (WCAS), acquired and merged Kindred at Home and Curo Health Services. Yet another home health and hospice powerhouse was formed, this time under the watch of one of the largest payers in the country.

In 2021, Humana opted to take over a remaining 60% of the enterprise (it had previously owned 40%), which was worth over $8 billion at the time.

In 2022, it divested the hospice and home care operations of Kindred to Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CD&R). Those divested assets became what is now known as Gentiva, led by David Causby, the former CEO of Kindred at Home.

The home health assets Humana held onto are now under CenterWell Home Health. CenterWell, overall, includes primary care, pharmacy and home health services.

In 2024, most large payers – namely the ones with large MA memberships – have some sort of home-based care capabilities. That was not the case when Humana acquired SeniorBridge way back when.

“This has been an ongoing development, and it’s really just vertical integration,” Bauer said. “The thought is: why not get into that downstream, and then be able to more directly control those costs and quality outcomes on the payer side?”

The other heavily involved payer is the only one that has a leg up on Humana in MA: UnitedHealth Group.

UnitedHealth Group’s Optum already had a variety of health care provider assets, but it decided to make its first big home-based care splash early in 2022 when it announced the $5.4 billion acquisition of LHC Group.

While payers liked the thought of vertical integration, large providers like LHC Group were also recognizing an existential threat to home health business: MA penetration. More MA beneficiaries meant fewer traditional Medicare beneficiaries, which meant a less sturdy financial leg to stand on.

UnitedHealth Group further cemented its interest not long after, when it made a $3.3 billion all-cash offer for Amedisys. That deal was agreed to in June of 2023, but is still pending.

Though UnitedHealth Group may have to divest some Amedisys assets to finalize the deal, the company will most likely have the largest home health market share when that deal closes. Estimates suggest Optum will have about 10% of the U.S. home health market under its belt.

Not only are payers now involved in the home health industry, but they are also creating scale.

“You can make an argument that Optum acquiring LHC group, and now Amedisys, is a scale transaction, like ones we’ve seen before,” Bauer said. “Because it puts together two of the largest providers to make an industry leader.”

New kids on the block

Like payers before them, another group of companies is now firmly involved in home-based care investment: retailers.

In fact, they’re so invested, they may not be labeled as just retailers five to 10 years from now.

CVS Health (NYSE: CVS) has a new health care services segment dubbed CVS Healthspire. Walgreens Boots Alliance (Nasdaq: WBA) has the same with its U.S. Healthcare segment.

Both of those segments are arguably the future of their respective parent organizations. And both include home-based care services.

Payers and retailers have different business models, but tend to want the same thing: pharmacy, primary care and home-based care services.

In 2020, Walgreens made an over $1 billion investment in VillageMD, a home- and community-focused primary care provider. After subsequent investments, it has backed VillageMD with over $6 billion.

After that, Walgreens found its next health care services asset in the health-at-home solutions platform CareCentrix. Though he is no longer in the position, CareCentrix’s former CEO, John Driscoll, was the initial leader of Walgreens new U.S. Healthcare segment.

“We continue to see strong results and potential for growth from our partnership with CareCentrix. Our full acquisition further accelerates our transformation to become a consumer-centric health care company, leveraging innovative platforms that extend our capabilities into fast-growing segments of health care,” former Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer said at the time. “CareCentrix is key to offering services to our patients at every stage of the care continuum, and to driving long-term, sustainable growth as part of our U.S. Healthcare strategy.”

Not to be outdone, CVS Health agreed to acquire the home- and value-based care enabler Signify Health in 2022 for $8 billion. Shortly after that, it got its primary care provider, too, with the over $10 billion acquisition of Oak Street Health.

While none of these assets are traditional home health or home care assets, this retailer involvement represents a seismic change in U.S. health care – and home-based care is a major part of it.

These companies could go after more assets in the future, or they could become major partners for those traditional providers.

Honorable mentions

It’s impossible to highlight every deal, but there are some that don’t fit perfectly into “themes” that are still worth mentioning.

The home care technology company Honor acquired the home care franchise brand Home Instead in 2021, for instance. In lieu of strictly partnering with providers to see its vision through, Honor opted to purchase Home Instead to speed up the process. The jury is still out on that deal, however.

Prior to agreeing to become a part of Optum, Amedisys also made plenty of deals that turned it into a multi-billion-dollar business.

It acquired the hospital-at-home platform Contessa Health in 2021 for $250 million.

It acquired Compassionate Care for $340 million in 2018, and AseraCare Hospice in 2020 for $235 million. Those two deals significantly bolstered its hospice arm.

Modivcare (Nasdaq: MODV) entered into the personal care game in a real way with its $575 million acquisition of Simplura Health Group in 2020 and its $340 million deal for CareFinders Total Care in 2021.

BrightSpring and PhaMerica completed a merger in 2019 that eventually led to today’s BrightSpring Health Services (Nasdaq: BTSG), which is now a public home-based care company.

Finally, Aveanna (Nasdaq: AVAH) – formerly a pediatric provider – entered into the home-based senior care world with its $345 million acquisition of Comfort Care Home Health in 2021 and its acquisition of Accredited Home Care for about $200 million later that year.

Addus Homecare Corporation (Nasdaq: ADUS) has executed several high-profile transactions of its own, most recently acquiring Tennessee Quality Care in a $106 million deal.

The post The Most Game-Changing Home-Based Care Blockbusters Of The Last Decade appeared first on Home Health Care News.

In order to be ranked on the list, a franchise company needs to be courting new franchisees in the U.S. or Canada. Companies that made the list also need to have had at least 10 units open and operating as of July 31, 2023, with at least one U.S.-based franchise.

Factors such as franchise cost and fees, size and growth, network support and brand strength determined each company’s evaluation.

Companies like Interim HealthCare, Home Instead and Senior Helpers ranked the highest of the home-based care franchises that managed to grab a spot on the list.

Interim HealthCare

— Rank: 59

— 2023 Rank: 55

— Units: 655

— Based in Sunrise, Florida, and a part of Caring Brands National, Interim is a franchise that provides home health, hospice, palliative care and other services across locations in the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.

Home Instead

— Rank: 149

— 2023 Rank: 155

— Units: 1,217

— Home Instead is a Omaha, Nebraska-based personal care franchise company that has locations in over a dozen countries. In 2021, the home care technology company Honor acquired Home Instead.

Senior Helpers

— Rank: 172

— 2023 Rank: 172

— Units: 361

— Maryland-based Senior Helpers has a national personal care network, as well as adult day centers. The company was acquired by Advocate Health Enterprises in 2021.

Homewatch CareGivers

— Rank: 222

— 2023 Rank: 208

— Units: 222

— Denver-based Homewatch CareGivers is a home care franchise company that operates in over 30 states and seven countries. The franchise employs over 4,500 caregivers.

Griswold Home Care

— Rank: 252

— 2023 Rank: 267

— Units: 186

— The Blue Bell, Pennsylvania-based Griswold is also a home care franchise. It provides personal care services in 30 states.

ComForCare

— Rank: 254

— 2023 Rank: 402

— Units: 229

— ComForCare is a home care franchise organization that has hundreds of territories independently-owned and operated in Canada and the U.S. ComForCare operates as At Your Side in Houston, Texas. ComForCare operates under parent company Best Life Brands. Another Best Life Brands company, Blue Moon Estate Sales, also ranked on the Franchise 500 list.

BrightStar Care

— Rank: 279

— 2023 Rank: 141

— Units: 373

— Chicago-based BrightStar is a provider of home care, senior living and supplemental staffing. The organization has been deliberately increasing its company-owned footprint of late.

Assisting Hands Home Care

— Rank: 280

— 2023 Rank: 229

— Units: 193

— Assisting Hands Home Care offers both medical and non-medical assistance for seniors, including meal preparation, companionship, chores and more.

HomeWell Care Services

— Rank: 283

— 2023 Rank: 347

— Units: 136

— HomeWell is a Burkburnett, Texas-based home care franchise that operates across the U.S. The company offers companion care, personal care, as well as specialty care.

Right at Home

— Rank: 318

— 2023 Rank: 260

— Units: 716

— Omaha, Nebraska-based Right at Home is a home care franchise company with locations in the U.S. and six other countries.

Nurse Next Door

— Rank: 418

— 2023 Rank: N/A

— Units: 183

— Vancouver, Canada-based Nurse Next Door is a home care franchise system that operates in the U.S., Canada and Australia. As an organization, the company provides personal care, companionship care, homemaking services, dementia care and more.

FirstLight Home Care

— Rank: 438

— 2023 Rank: 327

— Units: 197

— Cincinnati-based FirstLight Home Care is a provider of non-medical home care. The company also has a specialized care program aimed at seniors with dementia.

Synergy HomeCare

— Rank: 449

— 2023 Rank: 483

— Units: 453

— Synergy is a Gilbert, Arizona-based non-medical home care franchise. The company offers companionship services, in addition to personal assistance, housekeeping, live-in care and 24-hour home care services.

Home Helpers

— Rank: 475

— 2023 Rank: 396

— Units: 308

— The Cincinnati-based Home Helpers is a home care franchise that provides personal care, nutrition and companionship services, among others. It serves over 1,000 communities in the U.S.

Visiting Angels

— Rank: 479

— 2023 Rank: N/A

— Units: 692

— Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania-based Visiting Angels is an in-home senior care company that provides companion care, personal care services and more.

The post 15 Home-Based Care Providers Rank On Entrepreneur’s Annual Franchise 500 List appeared first on Home Health Care News.

It is common for Home Instead to see a spike in care service inquiries soon after the holidays, according to Lakelyn Hogan Eichenberger, gerontologist and caregiver advocate for Home Instead.

“This is because they were just home to visit their loved ones over the holidays, and they’ve started to notice these changes,” she told Home Health Care News. “We wanted to dig into that a little bit more, and get a better understanding of what they’re seeing and what they’re experiencing.”

Home Instead is a Omaha, Nebraska-based personal care franchise company that has locations in over a dozen countries. In 2021, the home care technology company Honor acquired Home Instead.

The findings come from a survey that Home Instead conducted in January. The survey also found that, of respondents that saw a decline in their family member’s well-being, 65% were specifically concerned about physical changes.

Additionally, the survey found that 64% of respondents were concerned about their family member’s ability to care for themselves, meaning things like daily hygiene and household tasks.

Declining cognitive skills were also a concern of 57% of respondents, and 44% were concerned by emotional changes, such as depression and loneliness.

Overall, 48% of respondents expressed that they don’t feel capable of helping their family member that is experiencing this decline.

“I think the most alarming finding was that many of them don’t feel capable of helping their loved one,” Eichenberger said. “They kind of feel at a loss. They are seeing these changes, but they’re not quite sure what to do.”

The need for care services across the country influenced the company’s goal of hiring 30,000 care professionals.

“We definitely know that there’s a need for care professionals in all of our locations, in all 50 states, across the U.S., because we’re seeing a growing need for care and support,” Eichenberger said.

Home Instead doesn’t plan on relying on one recruitment strategy to achieve this goal of 30,000.

“There’s not one silver bullet,” Eichenberger said. “There’s not one thing that we’re honing in on, it really takes a variety of approaches to find good care professionals, whether that’s online advertising, hiring days within local offices, where they invite the public to come in and learn about the role and do on-site interviews. There’s those more traditional media of newspaper advertisements, it really varies by the location. Our franchise owners, over time, have found ways to get creative in their various markets.”

Individual franchise owners will also receive support on the corporate level including advertising and robust marketing initiatives, according to Eichenberger.

“Getting people to see this as a desirable career that is meaningful, and one where they’re able to give back, is in our messaging,” she said.

The post Home Instead Set To Hit Gas Pedal On Recruitment Efforts appeared first on Home Health Care News.

At the beginning of each year, publications and experts like to lay out predictions for the next 12 months.

Home Health Care News also plays prognosticator. We published our 2024 home care trends piece earlier this week, and will publish our home health trends piece next week.

But an equally useful exercise – for myself and for HHCN’s audience – is to take a look back at what we got wrong in the previous year. It’s not just about what we got wrong, either. It’s about dissecting why we got it wrong in the first place.

It’s worth noting that our home care and home health trends predictions for last year were, in most cases, prescient and on the mark.

But the hit rate was not 100%. For instance, public home-based care companies did not see a universal rebound. Home care billing rates did not level off. Care management may have become incrementally more relevant, but certainly did not explode.

Those are just some examples. In this week’s exclusive, members-only HHCN+ Update, I uncover everything we got wrong in the past year – and why.

Home health care

The first thing I got wrong in 2023 was categorized under the prediction that “big names will remain active in the home health M&A space.”

While that’s not necessarily untrue, home health M&A overall remained down in 2023. There were 95 total home health, home care and hospice transactions, according to the M&A firm Mertz Taggart. That was considerably down from 2021, which was to be expected, but also 14% down from 2022.

But, most notable from that prediction is this sentence: “While America’s corporate giants will keep their attention on home-based care opportunities, there’s a good chance that 2023 passes without another monster, jaw-dropping mega deal that’s anywhere close to UnitedHealth Group’s LHC Group buy.”

That turned out to be not the case at all. Just four months after UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH) closed on its deal for LHC Group in February, it agreed to acquire Amedisys Inc. (Nasdaq: AMED) for about $3.3 billion in an all-cash deal.

The deal wasn’t quite what the LHC Group deal was – that had a $5.4 billion price tag – but it was undoubtedly a “monster mega-deal” in the home health space.

Later-revealed SEC filings also confirmed that Amedisys was effectively being shopped around for months before a deal was agreed to. Option Care Health (NYSE: OPCH) agreed to a deal with Amedisys first, but Optum ultimately won out in the bidding process.

With Amedisys and LHC Group underneath UnitedHealth Group’s Optum umbrella, the company would own about 10% of the home health market.

At the beginning of 2023, Amedisys’ former CEO, Paul Kusserow, had just returned after the dismissal of Chris Gerard. A new CEO search was underway, which backburnered the thought of a near-term transaction.

After Richard Ashworth was named CEO in March, he barely logged two months before the company had agreed to give up its independence.

In the end, Amedisys’ board clearly had changed its tune on the best path forward in late 2022. Prior to that, Amedisys was best off on its own, its leaders believed.

After that, however, headwinds such as Medicare Advantage (MA) penetration, fee-for-service rate cuts and continued staffing woes altered opinions.

A similar thought process led to an LHC Group sale in the first place, which is why HHCN should have seen this coming.

“We recognized that [shift] more quickly than a lot of providers, just because of the referrals we got from hospitals,” former LHC Group CEO Keith Myers said at HHCN’s FUTURE conference in September. “We had a much higher percentage of managed care referrals coming our way, and we didn’t have the resources to care for those patients, and we wanted to care for them. The hospital needs us to care for them.”

HHCN also predicted that public players would rebound in 2023 from significant downturns in 2022: “Now, with the final rule in place, the start of Home Health Value-Based Purchasing (HHVBP) model’s first performance year and other factors tied to the pandemic that might not be as big of an issue, 2023 looks to be a year of stabilization.”

With Amedisys, that was somewhat the case, but mostly due to the UnitedHealth Group deal. Overall, its stock price was up about 13% in 2023.

But the headwinds facing Enhabit Inc. (NYSE: EHAB) – and others – did not let up, which led to a strategic review that should materialize in a sale soon. It was down over 21% for the year.

Addus HomeCare Corporation (Nasdaq: ADUS) was down 6.6% on the year, but home health care is one of its smaller service lines, to be fair. It was met with an additional headwind, with the proposed rule from Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) that included potential caregiver wage mandates in home- and community-based services.

The Pennant Group was an outlier, up nearly 27% on the year. But it also has a large senior living portfolio.

For the most part, the operating environment didn’t stabilize much for providers in 2023, though COVID-19 concerns did wane.

Home care

One of the chief concerns for home care providers in 2023 was rising billing rates. Early on in 2024, that hasn’t changed, which makes HHCN’s prediction that “billing rates will level off in 2023” way off.

Anecdotally, providers have not seen billing rates taper. If anything, the cost of delivering services – and subsequently, billing rates – has continued to rise.

“Factors like inflation and recession will contribute to the growing cost of labor, leading to increased prices for services,” Qiana James, the CEO and founder of Friendly Faces Senior Care, told HHCN in December. “This may make home care unaffordable for many seniors, potentially forcing them to consider less desirable alternatives like nursing homes.”

Only 14% of Americans can currently pay for at-home care as they age, a recent analysis conducted by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University found. That number is even lower in certain markets across the country.

HHCN did predict that providers would start to either diversify into alternative payer sources, or, alternatively, completely tailor themselves as companies geared toward the wealthy. That prediction was correct, but more providers are opting for the latter option.

Two things contributed to this poor prediction. For one, macroeconomic factors – such as inflation – remained troublesome for home care providers. Secondly, Medicaid programs have become a steadying force, something that would not have been expected prior to the pandemic. 

Other than Medicaid, home care providers have also diversified into MA, but with limited success. HHCN saw MA as a viable revenue stream for providers through supplemental benefits, but also an avenue to convert more private-pay clients down the line.

BrightStar Care is one of the providers that remains committed to MA, and has converted some beneficiaries to private-pay clients.

Because of that MA mission, BrightStar Care was one of the franchise companies that had tensions with franchisees rise in 2022.

As far as I can tell, those tensions have eased of late, despite HHCN predicting that those tensions would increase in 2023. That is, in part, because of BrightStar Care’s effort to buy back locations from owners unwilling to invest in new initiatives.

At the same time, Honor – which owns the large home care franchise Home Instead – did lay off 15% of its HQ staff, letting go of many legacy Home Instead employees in the process. That likely didn’t spark confidence among Home Instead franchisees at the time.

Finally, care coordination. HHCN predicted that care coordination would become more popular in home care over the last year. Outside of the companies that have touted their programs for a while – such as Arosa and Help at Home – that hasn’t necessarily been the case.

It could be that home care providers gain more influence in other home-based care models or become the center of coordinating care in the future.

But, for now, most providers are just focused on maintaining a healthy staff and margin in their core business.

The post Mea Culpa: The Home-Based Care Predictions HHCN Got Wrong For 2023 appeared first on Home Health Care News.

The Home Care Association of America (HCAOA) has made several appointments to its board of directors.

Based in Washington D.C., HCAOA is an advocacy organization comprised of over 3,500 home care organizations. Earlier this year, Jason Lee took over as CEO of the association.

Joining HCAOA’s board as corporate representatives are Ramzi Abdine, the CEO of Comfort Keepers; Mari Baxter, the COO of Senior Helpers; Jake Brown, the CEO of Always Best Care; Veronica Charles, the senior director of government affairs at Maxim Healthcare Services; and Matt Kroll, practice president of assistive care and state programs at Bayada Home Health Care.

Representing the association’s independent agent representatives are Clayton Foutch, founder and COO of Home Matters Caregiving; Kunu Kaushal, founder and CEO of Senior Solutions Home Care; Neal Kursban, owner and CEO of Family & Nursing Care; Aaron Stapleton, founder and CEO of Trinity In Home Care; and Matt Walker, co-owner of Village Caregiving.

Honor appoints new chief communications officer

Honor – the home care technology company that owns Home Instead — has named Kim Atkinson as the company’s chief communications officer.

“Kim’s extensive background and experience in leading communications for high-growth companies makes her the perfect fit to lead Honor’s communications strategy on our mission to revolutionize how society cares for older adults,” Honor CEO Seth Sternberg said in a statement. “As we continue to enable our network to serve even more older adults and care professionals, Kim’s expertise will be vital in amplifying our voice and growth story.”

Before joining Honor, Atkinson served as SVP of communications for SmileDirectClub and led social and content marketing at IHG Hotels & Resorts.

“I am thrilled to join Honor at such a pivotal time in the company’s growth and work alongside our clients, franchise owners, care professionals and broader industry to help ensure quality care experiences as our aging population continues to grow,” Atkinson said in a statement.

Home Instead veteran joins startup Reverence Care

Jisella Dolan, the former chief global advocacy officer at Home Instead, is taking on a new role as a strategic advisor with the startup Reverence Care.

“Jisella is a true thought-leader within the home care space and deeply shares Reverence’s core mission of making long-term care and end-of-life care better and more accessible for all,” Reverence Care wrote on its LinkedIn page.

Reverence is a New York-based digital home-based care coordination platform. The company’s core technology aims to do what a scheduler would do and automates that work with a particular lens on filling difficult-to-cover shifts.

“It has been a true privilege for me personally getting to know Jisella Dolan and I couldn’t be more excited to welcome her to the Reverence family as a deeply mission-driven strategic advisor,” Reverence CEO Lee Teslik wrote on LinkedIn.

Aside from her role at Honor and Home Instead, Dolan also serves on the board of the HCAOA and has been recognized as one of Fortune’s Most Powerful Women.

CEO of Horizon Home Care & Hospice retiring

Mary Haynor, the president and CEO of the Milwaukee-based Horizon Home Care & Hospice, will retire on Jan. 5.

“Mary’s outstanding leadership and 24-year commitment to Horizon has resulted in exceptional services in home care, hospice and grief support,” Horizon Board Chair Diane Ehn said in a statement. “She has made a difference in the lives of others and this community impact will be her legacy.”

Haynor started her career in 1975 as a public health nurse for the City of Milwaukee Health Department. In 1999, she took over the CEO role at Horizon Home Care & Hospice.

Maxim Healthcare Services hires new VP of marketing

Maxim Healthcare Services has named Megan Morrissey as the company’s new VP of marketing.

“As a mission-driven company, we took great care and diligence to find a marketing executive who aligns with our values and culture,” Maxim CEO Jarrod DePriest said in a statement. “Megan is a phenomenal leader who brings a proven track record of expertise and success as well as a passion for people.”

The Maryland-based Maxim Healthcare Services provides home health, companion and behavioral care services.

Before joining Maxim, Morrissey served as the VP of marketing for the Thule Group.

“I am excited to join Maxim and drive the company’s marketing strategy,” Morrissey said in a statement. “Maxim has become a national leader in home health care and I look forward to advancing the mission and brand for the communities we serve.”

The post HCAOA Names New Board Members; Honor Appoints New Chief Communications Officer appeared first on Home Health Care News.

Instead, in 2023, home health providers saw another year defined by payment struggles, with both the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and Medicare Advantage (MA) plans.

Home care providers, meanwhile, were still grappling with high billing rates on the private-pay side. On the Medicaid side, home- and community-based services providers dealt with some rosy rate increases, but also some regulatory concern with a proposed wage mandate provision from CMS.

But, in a year that had a historically low M&A volume, home-based care transactions grabbed the headlines more than ever.

Reflect back on this year in home-based care by revisiting 10 of HHCN’s most widely read stories.

1. Optum Lures Amedisys Away From Option Care Health With $3.3B All-Cash Deal (June 26)

The sale of Amedisys Inc. (Nasdaq: AMED) – one of the largest home health providers in the country – is still pending. But the saga grabbed many of the top headlines on HHCN in 2023.

First, Option Care Health (Nasdaq: OPCH) agreed to acquire the provider, in hopes that it could create an “end-to-end” continuum in the home. Ultimately, UnitedHealth Group’s Optum lured Amedisys away with an all-cash deal.

2. $5.4 Billion LHC Group-Optum Deal Closes (Feb. 22)

Optum’s acquisition of LHC Group – another one of the largest home health providers in the country – was one of the top stories in 2022. It remained a top story in 2023, however, as the deal closed in February.

If Optum is able to finalize its deal with Amedisys, it will own about 10% of the home health market.

3. Rumors Swirl Around Potential Cigna Group-Humana Combination (Nov. 28)

This top story was all for naught. Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM) and Cigna Group (NYSE: CI) were in talks to combine, but eventually could not agree on a fair price.

Humana was also linked to Walmart (NYSE: WMT), but it’s unclear if those talks have advanced.

In the end, if Humana – which owns CenterWell Home Health, another one of the largest home health providers – is acquired, it is sure to be one of the biggest home-based care stories of 2024.

4. CMS Finalizes 0.8% Home Health Payment Increase For 2024, Additional PDGM Cuts (Nov. 1)

CMS first proposed a 2.2% decrease to home health payments for CY 2024 in June, but ultimately ended up finalizing a meager 0.8% bump to aggregate payments.

Providers remain unhappy with CMS’ rate cuts, which were still included in the final rule despite the pay bump.

“Immediately, you feel a little sigh of relief as an operator just because we were expecting the full proposed cut,” Healing Hands Healthcare CEO Summer Napier said of the rule. “But then the further you read, you’re like, ‘This is trash. I’m not going to accept this for 2025 and beyond. It’s not happening.’”

5. Humana’s CenterWell To Acquire Trilogy Home Health (April 24)

CenterWell Home Health acquired the Florida-based Trilogy Home Health in April in what was one of the first big splashes the provider made under Humana ownership.

HHCN had the exclusive on the deal, which added 11 locations to CenterWell’s home health portfolio.

6. Details Emerge Around Home Health Titan April Anthony’s New Venture, VitalCaring (Feb. 2)

April Anthony, formerly the CEO of Encompass Health’s (NYSE: EHC) home health and hospice arm, was not away from the industry for long.

Early in the year, details finally emerged around her new venture, VitalCaring, which is funded by Anthony, The Vistria Group and Nautic Partners.

The home health and hospice company has grown significantly in its first year.

7. The Potentially Dire Long-Term Impact Of Home Health Agency Closures (Jan. 17)

The amount of home health agencies has slowly declined over the last decade.

In recent years, agencies have closed due to rate cuts and MA penetration. This article detailed some of those stories, and also explained the significance of those closures.

8. Honor Lays Off 15% Of HQ Staff, Including Long-Time Home Instead Employees (June 27)

In June, Honor – the home care technology company that owns Home Instead – announced that it would be laying off 15% of its HQ staff, which included many longtime Home Instead employees.

9. CD&R-Backed Gentiva Agrees To Acquire ProMedica’s Home Care, Hospice Assets For $710M (Feb. 27)

When Humana acquired Kindred at Home to create CenterWell Home Health, it divested the home care and hospice assets. Those assets turned into Gentiva.

Gentiva – which has made palliative care a major focus – made its first big splash with the $710 million acquisition of ProMedica’s home care and hospice assets.

10. New CMS Dementia Care Model Opens Doors Of Opportunity For Home-Based Care Providers (Jul. 31)

CMS announced a new dementia care model this year – the GUIDE Model – which excited home care providers across the country.

Over the next decade, providers will have the chance to be paid by the government to help care for dementia patients across the country.

The post The Top 10 Home Health Care News Stories Of 2023 appeared first on Home Health Care News.

The list is based on last year’s global systemwide sales — total sales for both franchise and company units — performance.

In order to earn a spot on the list, a company needs to be a legal U.S. franchise. It should also own at least 10% of the company’s total units.

At-home care franchise companies Home Instead Senior Care, Right at Home and Interim HealthCare managed to crack the top 100 portion of the list, alongside big name companies like McDonald’s (NYSE:MCD), Dunkin’ (Nasdaq:DNKN) and The UPS Store (UPS:NYSE).

Home Instead Senior Care

— Rank: 44

— System Sales: $2,400,000,000

— Total Locations: 1,217

— Home Instead is a Omaha, Nebraska-based personal care franchise company that has locations in over a dozen countries. In 2021, the home care technology company Honor acquired Home Instead.

Interim HealthCare

— Rank: 65

— System Sales: $1,288,000,000

— Total Locations: 655

— The Sunrise, Florida-based company – a part of Caring Brands International — provides personal care, hospice care, palliative care, pediatric care and staffing services.

Visiting Angels

— Rank: 90

— System Sales: $900,000,000

— Total Locations: 697

— Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania-based Visiting Angels is an in-home senior care company that provides companion care, personal care services and more.

Right at Home

— Rank: 100

— System Sales: $778,386,711

— Total Locations: 712

— Omaha, Nebraska-based Right at Home is a home care franchise company with locations in the U.S. and six other countries.

BrightStar Care

— Rank: 117

— System Sales: $653,907,370

— Total Locations: 370

— Chicago-based BrightStar is a provider of home care, senior living and supplemental staffing. The organization has been deliberately increasing its company-owned footprint of late.

Comfort Keepers

— Rank: 124

— System Sales: $625,000,000*

— Total Locations: 645

— Irvine, California-based Comfort Keepers is one of the largest personal home care providers in the U.S. It recently was acquired by The Halifax Group.

Senior Helpers

— Rank: 176

— System Sales: $387,243,000

— Total Locations: 327

— Maryland-based Senior Helpers has a national personal care network, as well as adult day centers. The company was acquired by Advocate Health Enterprises in 2021.

ComForCare Home Care

— Rank: 225

— System Sales: $238,000,000

— Total Locations: 223

— ComForCare is a home care franchise organization that has 270 territories independently-owned and operated in Canada and the U.S. ComForCare operates as At Your Side in Houston, Texas.

Home Helpers Home Care

— Rank: 230

— System Sales: $231,856,454

— Total Locations: 304

— The Cincinnati-based Home Helpers is a home care franchise that provides personal care, nutrition and companionship services, among others. It serves over 1,000 communities in the U.S.

Synergy HomeCare

— Rank: 236

— System Sales: $223,257,894

— Total Locations: 417

— Synergy is a Gilbert, Arizona-based non-medical home care franchise. The company offers companionship services, in addition to personal assistance, housekeeping, live-in care and 24-hour home care services.

Always Best Care

— Rank: 245

— System Sales: $212,591,506

— Total Locations: 232

— Roseville, California-based Always Best Care is a home care franchise company that operates across 225 territories in 30 states and Canada.

Homewatch CareGivers

— Rank: 246

— System Sales: $211,550,548

— Total Locations: 224

— Denver-based Homewatch CareGivers is a home care franchise company that operates in over 30 states and seven countries. The franchise employs over 4,500 caregivers.

Griswold

— Rank: 251

— System Sales: $199,100,000

— Total Locations: 178

— The Blue Bell, Pennsylvania-based Griswold is also a home care franchise. It provides personal care services in 30 states.

FirstLight Home Care

— Rank: 257

— System Sales: $188,207,247

— Total Locations: 195

— Cincinnati-based FirstLight Home Care is a provider of non-medical home care. The company also has a specialized care program aimed at seniors with dementia.

Assisting Hands Home Care

— Rank: 299

— System Sales: $124,305,162

— Total Locations: 175

— Assisting Hands Home Care offers both medical and non-medical assistance for seniors, including meal preparation, companionship, chores and more.

Caring Senior Service

— Rank: 475

— System Sales: $35,050,000

— Total Locations: 51

— San Antonio, Texas-based home care franchise company Caring Senior Service offers personal care, meal preparation, transportation, companionship, housekeeping and more.

The post 16 Home-Based Care Companies Earn Spots On The Franchise Times’ Top 400 List appeared first on Home Health Care News.