Starting a Home Care Business

This is the first question you should be asking yourself when starting a home care business. Although the care you provide will become the most important part of your home care business, you cannot provide compassionate home care until you have patients to care for. 

As owners of successful home care and home health care businesses, we know firsthand how difficult it can be to market your home care business. Here is a list of the items you will need to market your home care business: A logo, business cards, and brochures. That is it. Yes, promotional items are great, and yes there are other ways to market, but without these 3 items you are going to have a difficult time marketing your home care business.

Who will my home care business market to?

Healthcare Referral Marketing and Grassroots Marketing

You need to think about patient referral sources. Who are my patients and who do they do business with? Doctors. Hospitals. Inpatient/Outpatient therapies. Adult Day Health Centers. Assisted Living Facilities. You name it. But there are also senior centers, elder care attorneys, moving companies, tax specialists, and many more referral sources who do business with the same senior population you would like to do business with. There are potential referral sources. Do not just think healthcare. Think about your neighborhood and community. Visit the housing projects. Visit the senior centers. Traditional healthcare marketing to patient referral sources as well as grassroots marketing in your own back yard is a great approach to marketing your home care business. Of course, if you already have established relationships with referral sources, or know people who do, you are going to be ahead of the game on day 1.

Internet Lead Generation. Search Engine Optimization. Website Marketing. (DONT BE FOOLED)

Do not waste your time and money taking advise from people who have never actually started or operated a successful home care business. You will waste your money if you dedicate it to any of these things.

Here is the only thing you need when it comes to the internet – A Google Ads Campaign. A Google Ads campaign will allow your home care business to appear on the first page of Google from day 1. Imagine if every time someone within a few miles of you searched for home care services on the web, they saw your ad. Imagine that. For every 10 or so searches, you will receive a phone call. You can be sure when you get that call this person has also called other agencies looking for quotes for home care services. Possibly they have called 2 or 3 other home care businesses aside from yours. So long as you are prepared and know what to offer, and do so at a reasonable cost, with a friendly smile on your face, you can be assured that for every 5 or 10 calls you receive, at least one of them will utilize your services. For the record, we get much better results than this. The best part about Google Ads is that you get to choose your daily budget and how much money you would like to spend every day/week/month/year. We recommend starting a campaign with at least $1,000 if not more for a given week or month. This will give you enough data and leads to convert into sales and reinvest back into your campaign.

A Good Home Care Marketer for Your Home Care Business

Just like a good life partner (or business partner), a good home care marketer is very hard to find. We recommend only hiring seasoned marketing professionals who have worked in the same market you are doing business in. This person should have experience obtaining home care patient referrals specifically. If you cannot find this person, you must be this person until you do.

Other Home Care Marketing Initiatives when Starting a Home Care Business

There are other marketing and business development approaches to marketing your home care business, but this is where you want to start and what you want to be thinking about if you truly plan on running a successful home care business.

Your home care business is a non-medical business and not a home health care business. This means that most of the services you are providing will be paid out of pocket at the expense of your patient (Medicare and most insurance companies only reimburse for home health care – There are however oppertunities to enroll with Medicaid or Waiver Programs in many states). This may not seem appealing to you, but keep in mind, the unfortunate folks in this situation have no other choice. The need is plenty, and the demand is only growing. When you see a successful home care franchise business, these are private pay businesses being paid cash money by their patients and their families in nearly every case.

Now, this is not to say that you are only limited to private pay. Other sources of potential income, depending on the State you live in, may include Medicaid, Medicaid Waiver Programs, Some Insurance Companies (not common at all), the VA, and local MCO/ACOs (as will Medicaid, these MCO/ACO organizations typically require an accreditation (we can help you with your home care accreditation). In many cases, there are Medicaid Waiver Programs available without the need for accreditation. If you would like more information on how starting your home care business or more information about how your home care business can bill these payers, call us today.