StartupHomeCare Blog

Questions You Should Be Asking About Starting A Home Care Business

by Editor

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Questions You Should Be Asking At This Point

There are numerous “Home Care Professionals” out there that would lead you to believe they do “exactly what AHI Group does”. The below list of questions will help you compare apples to apples in your due diligence process:

1. Getting a license and opening my doors for business is the easy part. Will I have an assigned coach/mentor who has previously owned and grown their own multi-million dollar business – from the ground up – to guide me after I open my doors for business?

2. How will you help me stand out from the competition in my area who are already embedded in the home care industry? Everyone says that they “have the best trained caregivers”, “have specialty programs like hospice, and Alzheimer’s”, and “that they will take the difficult cases.”

3. Will you help sign me up for 50+ long term care insurance, workers comp, Medicaid Waiver contracts without charging me $2,000 per contract “add on fees” to do so? After I get signed up with these companies how exactly do you help me get referrals from them? I’ve heard there are many home care companies already signed up with them and I would need to stand out from the existing competition they already trust/use in order to start getting referrals?

4. Do you have a “VA Pension Benefit Program” that can potentially help 15 million elderly veterans and their spouses get $2,200 per month to help pay for their home care services? I’m not referring to the “VA Healthcare Homebound Program” where we would contract directly with the VA and then try to get referrals from the VA Case Managers. Tell me about your VA Pension Benefit Program where we can go directly to the public, educate them about this benefit, and then help them get $2,200 a month that will go directly to their bank account so they can pay for their aide care.

5. Does the 3rd party you use to process VA Pension Benefit applications have an interest free loan program for my clients? How do I compete with AHI Group members who have a loan program and can help their VA clients get the pension benefit without spending up to $10,000 out of their own pockets up front on care? NOTE: They may tell you they have “another way around doing a client loan.” They are referring to having a family member be the caregiver for 4-5 months until the client gets approved for the pension benefit. Once the client is approved for the benefit, the home care agency must try to fire the family caregiver and take over the care. Most families don’t have a family caregiver who can provide the care for 4-5 months so that kills the deal. Those that do usually want to keep that family member in play, after getting approved for the benefit, and don’t see a need for the home care agency. Result: The home care agency never starts services.

6. Could you get me a copy of my assigned coach/mentor’s bio so I can see their background/experience? Have they actually owned a successful home care agency?

7. What percentage of the parties attending your 3-4 day seminar are out of business in 1 or 2 years?

8. Medicaid only reimburses $13.58/hour in my state. How am I supposed to make more than a $1/hour when I have to pay my caregivers $10/hour and workers compensation and employer taxes? Do you have any other pipelines of business that offer more profit?

9. How will you help me attract quality caregivers? I know that 89% of caregivers say they will switch to another agency for an extra $1-2 per hour. If I’m paying 1/3 of my take home income to a franchiser then how will I be able to pay top dollar for caregivers?

10. Have you given out your proprietary tools and marketing techniques to thousands of other home care agencies you have helped? How will I set myself apart from them if we all have the exact same tools/training? You say you will help me (and the other thousands of home care agencies you have helped) all get our websites ranked on the first page of Google. That can take years and some large companies have much more money to invest in that than I do starting out. Also, home care statistics show that Google ranked on-line leads only bring 10% of a large, well ranked, home care agency’s business and are hard to win as no-one has referred the potential client. Eighty percent of home care referrals are getting handed out by healthcare professionals – how will I compete to get those referrals?

AHI GROUP OFFERS A SMART ALTERNATIVE TO PURCHASING A NON MEDICAL HOME CARE FRANCHISE OR PURCHASING 3-4 DAYS OF SEMINAR STYLE TRAINING. Why pay franchise royalties and be restricted to a small territory? Why hire consultants who offer 3-4 day seminars and then leave you to the wolves with no assigned, seasoned, coach/mentor to help you make it through your critical first year and maximize your opportunities? AHI Group gives you the benefits of BOTH a franchise and a consultant without the downside. Please visit our FAQ page for more questions about the home care industry, our model, and our answers.

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