Demand for Home Care Services is Growing

The senior living culture has been rapidly changing over the last two decades. What was once consistently referred to as the “long-term care industry” with its foundation solidly rooted in skilled care nursing facilities, the senior living culture now represents a much broader range of housing and senior service options. 

This changing environment is the result of increasing demand coupled with the need for more cost-effective solutions. For decades, a nursing facility was the prevalent option for seniors with long-term or special health care needs. For example, a seasoned senior requiring daily insulin injections would most likely need to be admitted to a nursing facility if a competent caregiver was not readily available. Likewise, a senior with dementia could not be left alone. They too would have gone to a nursing home. Being the only option for long-term care, the nursing home setting was once a “catch all” for a wide variety of patient needs which, obviously, increased cost to patients and tax payers. 

Over time, home care services have evolved and integrated with changes in the medical industry that continues to experience increasing outpatient treatments and services. Many seasoned seniors are now more likely to avoid long-term care facilities altogether or remain short-term to treat acute illnesses or rehabilitation. Others are able to travel to senior centers or day-hab facilities for daily activities or treatments and then return home to maintain independence. 

According to Colleen Teixeira Moffat of the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics who studies the occupation of personal and home care aides, “Increasing healthcare costs partly explain this growing demand for a shift in need to more in-home care. It's a lot more cost-effective to leave a hospital sooner when all a senior might need is assistance with daily activities," she said. "A visiting nurse, home health aide, and personal and home care aide all will be cheaper than a stay in a residential care facility," she says.

Especially in looking long-term with the growing elderly population, there’s nothing short of opportunity in starting and owning a home care agency. Consider, “INC Magazine” ranked in-home care as “one of the fastest growing” and “best businesses to start.” Reasons for such accolades are simple – demand is exponentially growing.

In fact, in addition to providing preventative care and saving clients and families a lot of money by staying at home versus receiving facility care, consider some of the many benefits your quality service will provide to clients and family:

• Clients maintain their privacy, dignity, comfort, and independence at home 
• Clients remain in control of their own environment 
• Clients have unique care plans specific to them versus a group of people 
• Clients remaining at home encourages a more active lifestyle
• Clients at home increases family accessibility and helps keep families together
• Client safety and security provides significant peace of mind to families 

When you consider all the concerns versus benefits, the opportunities are obvious. An additional interesting fact that further bring perspective to the industry is 45 percent of family members who serve as caregivers to loved ones are seniors themselves. That’s significant because it supports the reason why almost 55 percent of families responsible for caring for a loved one report using at least one type of outside service for respite care, transportation, home delivered meals, housekeeping, or other. 

Another aspect that makes Joel’s resource so unique is that it’s the product of working with countless home care agencies over many, many years. Joel has been able to evaluate many successful home care agencies across the country to learn what works, understand challenges, and discover specific training and operational management strategies.  Conversely, Joel’s exposure to so many agencies has also afforded him the opportunity to observe common mistakes and develop effective solutions to solving problems. 

Knowing the type of business model we want to start, companion care, we can more accurately identify and profile prospective clients - seasoned seniors between the age of 65 and 90, who are generally ambulatory or semi-ambulatory, do not require direct medical assistance to function and remain living at home, can articulate their own desires and intentions, understand their age-defining limitations, and are receptive to outside assistance.