By Lara Patterson, HomeWell Opening Services Manager
It is an exciting time! You are now a business owner and you’re on the way to opening your own home care agency. What happens now?
Welcome to the Opening Services team at HomeWell Franchising, Inc. This is your first stop after you have signed your Franchise Agreement. We are here to help guide you through the “what now?” moments and our primary objective and purpose is to help you open your agency.
Licensing
The U.S. healthcare industry is carefully regulated. Each state has its own regulations to protect consumers. In most states, a home care agency needs a license to operate. There are 12 states that do not require any type of licensing for a private-pay, home care agency. We can typically get those agencies open and ready to start servicing clients within 90 days.
However, most states do require a license to open a home care agency. Our first focus then becomes getting an application for your license submitted. In fact, it is our main focus for about the first 30 days. The time for licensing varies greatly among all the states, anywhere from 90 – 180 days. Ultimately, our goal is less days to the dollar – in other words, getting you open as soon as possible to start earning revenue.
Strategic Business Planning
Once the application has been submitted, the timeline begins. Opening Services works with you on everything from building a business plan, performing a competitive analysis to determining pay and billing rates.
HomeWell partners with one of the industry’s leading home care agency software companies. This management system software is where our owners input all their data, including client and caregiver information. Accurately getting this software set-up is an integral part of opening a home care agency. Our Opening Services team helps owners start this process getting everything set-up properly and facilitating comprehensive software training.
Logistics
Each agency has a physical office. We discuss the site selection process for the office, including location choices that are the best and the needs for that space. We also review the insurance requirements to operate and then move on to the necessary items for setting up your office.
The Opening Services team will also introduce you to our online marketing portal. The HomeWell marketing team has created marketing collateral for our agencies to personalize and easily order. There are some marketing materials that agencies will want to get sooner rather than later. For instance, having business cards and branded stationary is important to have as soon as you get your license.
Additionally, we have relationships with vendors across the board to help connect you to secondary referral sources, payroll processing, recruiting, and much more.
Now that you’ve read a little about our openings process, connect with us to see if HomeWell is the right fit for you.