Home Care Franchise Report

Home Care

This report is based on the U.S. home care franchise industry. The data contained in this report was drawn from the Franchise Disclosure Documents (FDD) of a representative sample of 18 home care franchises and published industry sources.

Defining Home Care

Home care refers to a wide range of services that are provided for individuals with restricted mobility either in their own homes or in a senior care facility. The U.S. Senate Special Committee released a report on aging in February, 2000 that described home care as the following:

“It [long-term care] differs from other types of health care in that the goal of long-term care is not to cure an illness, but to allow an individual to attain and maintain an optimal level of functioning….

Long-term care encompasses a wide array of medical, social, personal, and supportive and specialized housing services needed by individuals who have lost some capacity for self-care because of a chronic illness or disabling condition”¹

Individuals may require long-term home care if they suffer from a chronic condition or illness that limits their ability to carry out basic self-care tasks, called activities of daily living (ADLs), (bathing, dressing or eating), or instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs) (household chores, meal preparation, or managing money). Most home care is non-medical and is provided by paraprofessionals. Some aspects of home care can only be provided by licensed professionals and so franchises may employ licensed professionals in order to offer this medical care.

For more detailed information on the services provided by home care franchises, please see “Types of Home care”

A Brief History Of Home Care

Home care is a diverse and dynamic service industry that began in U.S. in the 1880’s². By 1930 the leading cause of death was no longer infectious diseases but chronic degenerative diseases. Patients mainly sought care in hospitals and only a small margin of people wanted to be cared for at home. With the rising costs of hospital care and introduction of Medicare legislation, which was enacted to help provide benefits to home care patients, and Medicaid, the state medical assistance program for the poor that included provisions for home care, the popularity of home care began to rise and has continued to rise as more people opt to “age in place” rather than leave their homes.

Franchising in the home care industry only began in the last 20 years and it is over the past 10 years alone that the number of franchise brands has risen dramatically. In the home care industry a franchisee’s main source of business is providing non-medical care and companionship to seniors. This group constitutes the heaviest consumers of home care and the fastest growing segment of the entire population.

Home Instead Senior Care was one of the first organizations to successfully apply the franchising business model to the home care industry and, thereby, contribute to the application of franchising principles to a new market sector. Home Instead Senior Care has since grown to over 800 units and is unquestionably one of the strongest home care brands in the market.
 

¹ Special Committee on Aging. Developments in Aging: 1997 and 1998, Volume 1, Report 106-229. Washington, DC: United States Senate, 2000.

²The National Association for Home Care & Hospice, Basic Statistics about Home Care, www.nahc.org.

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