Care Across America
"Care Across America, an Approved Senior Network® Podcast"—your go-to source for engaging conversations and practical insights from home care and senior care experts across the United States. Each episode will spotlight industry professionals, and their referral networks, sharing impactful stories, proven strategies, and innovative solutions in senior care. This podcast is perfect for professionals, adult children of aging parents, and family members struggling with senior care choices and care.
Care Across America
From Two Offices to Ten: Building a Customer-First Home Care Business
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Twenty years ago, Andy Howard founded Home Care Professionals with a vision to provide quality non-medical home care to seniors across Northern California. Today, alongside his business partner Don Franks, they've grown from a small operation to a network of ten offices stretching from Reading to Fresno—a remarkable achievement in an industry dominated by single-location providers and franchises.
What makes this growth story particularly compelling is their unique approach to staffing and service. Unlike franchise operations where individual branches operate independently, Home Care Professionals functions as an integrated system sharing caregivers across locations. This structural advantage creates remarkable resilience when staffing challenges arise. "We are a unicorn in the industry," Franks explains. "We're privately held with ten offices able to share staff, which means we staff more efficiently than other companies." This advantage has led to state contracts and referrals when other agencies can't meet client needs.
The home care landscape is changing rapidly. With 10,000 Americans turning 65 daily (a trend continuing through 2027), we're witnessing just the beginning of unprecedented demand. The real surge will come when this generation reaches 75—the age when many begin requiring assistance with daily activities. For families navigating these waters, the choice between private hiring and agency care can be daunting. Home Care Professionals stands out not just for their staffing capabilities but for their educational approach to client relationships. They provide potential clients with questions to ask when comparing agencies, make community referrals even when it doesn't generate revenue, and specialize in helping veterans navigate complex VA benefits. As Franks emphasizes, "We want every person we serve to be treated like my own family member."
Considering home care for yourself or a loved one? Call any of our ten Northern California offices for a free consultation to learn how our compassionate, professional team can help maintain independence and dignity at home.
View More at HomeCareMarketingNews.com
My name is Don Franks. I am the president of Home Care Professionals here in the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California, and we have 10 offices stretching from as far north as Red Reading and as far south as Fresno.
Speaker 2:That's a big territory, and tell us a little bit about the beginnings of Home Care Professionals. What year did you guys get started in home care? And it's grown tremendously over the last few years.
Speaker 1:Sure, so we just had our 20th year anniversary. Andy Howard is our CEO and my business partner, andy and I got to meet each other about I don't know, I guess 10 years ago or so. I actually did consulting for Andy when he was a very small company. My background as far as the home care industry is concerned I was initially in the recruiting business right out of college. From there, a gentleman by the name of John Griscavage and I have now been together for I guess over 20 years doing different businesses. After recruiting I got into the healthcare arena because I was really interested, especially in the pulmonology side of things, because as an asthmatic it really interested me.
Speaker 1:I went on to be a regional manager at a company in I guess it's kind of West Coast based in the oxygen and medication world, and myself and John we started through a private equity company with a home health, hospice and non-medical company. The private equity company that brought us on to manage the company got in a room with John. John said OK, we got hospice, we got home health. No idea what it is, but it's not doing well. I said OK, so what do you want to do? And I said give me the private duty. So from that conversation we had two offices I believe at the time in Northern California. We had two offices, I believe at the time in Northern California. We grew that organically and through acquisition, kind of Colorado West. So we had offices all throughout the Northern California, southern California, arizona, utah, colorado. So we were the first company that Kindred came in and acquired.
Speaker 1:So Kindred was looking to get into the home health space. They acquired our company to be the first to do that and so I stayed on for about a year and ran the services of non-medical home care throughout the United States for Kindred. And then the travel just got to me, said I don't want to keep getting on a plane every day as I had young kids at the time and decided that I wanted to do something more local. And so that is when I did some of the consulting for Andy and after I ventured into an autism company that is very similar to operationally how home care works, we sold that company and then that's when I partnered with Andy. Moving forward I've been here for about seven years when I was doing consulting I believe we were two offices. We had just opened up our third and we just opened up our 10th office.
Speaker 2:That's crazy, that's amazing. You guys and in the last seems to me like the last three or four years you've been acquiring and opening and really hitting it hard across California. So that's amazing. I know you really have grown a lot. So tell us what are the services? I know it's private duty, but is it just? Is it private duty all the way across the board, for all of your offices in California?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we only do non-medical and so within the industry we call it private duty For the consumer. Not many people know that word. We want to try to say home care, but even within the health care community there's always a confusion between home health and home care. When we say home care, that means non-medical services, that means any type of activities of daily living that we're serving inside of somebody's home, usually for seniors or those with medical conditions, but it's cooking and cleaning and bathing and toileting, transportation, medication reminders, et cetera. So anything that you could think of non-medical et cetera.
Speaker 2:So anything that you could think of. Non-medical Yep, absolutely. That's great, and there's not enough of you out there to serve all the people who actually need we can have. I know it's a competitive market, but on the other hand, there's so many folks that could benefit from a companion in their home so many. And so that brings me to this. When an adult child or seniors, they're concerned about someone in their home, either a, and so that brings me to this. When an adult child or a senior is they're concerned about someone in their home, either a family member or maybe a spouse of someone who needs care, and they call the office, or they see you online, or they're referred to you and they call the office. How does this process kind of work, from the minute somebody calls and says I think we need home care to implementation? How does that work, dr Anneke Vandenbroek?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so again, even within the healthcare community it's confusing For consumers. A lot of people out there believe that this is a service that is paid through Medicare. So when somebody is generally getting older and they need some activity, daily living help inside the home, we get the call where people just really don't even know who pays for it, how much it costs, how it works, et cetera. So anytime that you call our company you are getting a live person that walks you through exactly what the services entail, what the costs are and how we differ from other companies. The one thing to note is that there's still 10,000 seniors turning 65 every day. We are at the peak of that currently. There's one more year of the peak and that's in 2000. It actually goes till 2027. You're going to see the last of the peak of the 10,000, but that's 65 years old. The real need is going to be in 10 years when the 65 year olds turn 75. So the growth of this industry is going to be massive for the next 10 years.
Speaker 1:They also don't understand that there is, as we're seeing, around every city across America. There is an assisted living or independent living facility being built as well. The option is really involved in that, especially as a licensed state, that we do the same as our competitors, right? In fact, we even share a lot of our same caregivers with other companies, and so it's not that we are different in that aspect at all. We all do the same thing. Where you're going to see the difference is in customer service. When you call us, our customer service goes so far even from just the general conversation about what the services may entail. We also give them things out in the community that may have nothing to do with us making revenue at all, and I think that's very important, and I think that we're all on the same page as far as health care is concerned, because we want to educate the public.
Speaker 1:From that point, we have somebody that goes into the home and we provide a free consultation for them, which we call an assessment. Those assessments generally last about an hour or so. We find out all about the client, what exactly it is that we would be doing in the home. What we want to also find out is who would do well with them Personality. Do they like somebody talkative? Do they want to have a lot of conversation, play games, et cetera, or is it somebody that they want, you know, a little less talkative. Do they want somebody? Maybe not an A-type personality, right? So we have to also make that fit along, just with skill set. So then as soon as we make that connection, we understand what the client needs, then that goes to our staffing managers and our staffing managers then find the perfect person for them. We also give the opportunity for people to also interview our caregivers ahead of time to make sure that they're making the right decision.
Speaker 2:That's amazing and you are right about that. Customer service. I know you can talk to anybody any of your friends or whatever and you'll hear almost every conversation. Is there just isn't great customer service anymore. I don't know what happened, or they're at Lowe's or they're anything on the phone. Especially so the fact that you all are really embedded in creating a good experience for people on a customer service level to me that speaks volumes. Customer service level to me, that speaks volumes. This is a hard business and scheduling is hard and hiring is hard, but when your heart is in it and you know what these people are going through and the staff that works for you understands that overwhelm and it could be emotional, financial. There's all kinds of things that go into all of this. It's the fear of having someone come into your house that they've never met before.
Speaker 1:All those things are hard for folks when they are starting to implement care and so good customer service is you know, and I want to also even say, bobby, like the, being a consumer myself, I have had three family members that have used my services. I have also had family members outside of my service area and have used other companies, and I know from the consumer end that I've had really bad customer service from my experiences outside the Bay Area. And I can also say that we as a company are not perfect, and nobody in home care is. It's people working with people, and you have to know that going in. So the second thing I would also say on top of customer service is staffing.
Speaker 1:What most people don't know is even in the big companies, right, the large organizations out there that you may have seen commercials on, those companies generally only are owned at one location, right?
Speaker 1:So one company that's a franchise may have their own branch five minutes away from the same company's branch, but those two offices do not work together and share caregivers amongst each other.
Speaker 1:Therefore, you are only as good as how many people you have as a staff or a company, and then you have 90% of this industry is very small companies. So we are a unicorn in the industry that we're privately held with 10 offices that's able to share staff amongst the offices and therefore we generally staff a lot I wouldn't say better, but more efficiently than other companies. Because of that reason we have huge contracts through the state that we always are getting the clients that they're coming to us and saying, hey, this company wasn't able to staff this, they're unhappy. We wanted to go to you guys see if you can help out. So, aside from customer service, just making sure that you feel comfortable with the company, also making sure that what happens if the caregiver doesn't show up the next day, do you have other staff that may be available? It's a very important question to ask as a consumer.
Speaker 2:Not only that, if you're considering hiring a caregiver privately, this is a big concern because there's all kinds of issues around hiring someone privately. From my perspective as a nurse, and having seen this a lot across the board across the whole United States, hiring someone privately is a huge risk. But when you hire an agency and you're backed up by that plan of when they can't arrive or something's not right or someone is, whatever the case, when you're backed by an agency, you have not just that one person that you're relying on, but an entire team of people who can fix that situation or help with it instantly. So to me it's a much safer and a much better and plus the background checks, the taxes, all the other things that come with privately hiring versus agency- things that come with privately hiring versus agency I'll always be.
Speaker 1:People are always in a situation where they have to look at what is their budget. Right? You hire an agency, you're getting all of those things that you had just mentioned right. You're having somebody that has a background check TB, maybe, covid, they've gone through training, they are certified by the state, et cetera, et cetera. But maybe you can't afford an agency, right? Maybe you have to go and find somebody and we even give.
Speaker 1:When somebody calls us and they say, hey, we just can't afford that, we'll give them options. We'll ask them to go to their local senior center and see if they have a list of private caregivers. We will tell them to go to caringcom or carecom so at least they can see vetted individuals who they might be able to hire privately. So we do something that's unique when we get a call and they're still shopping, we actually send them a form of questions to ask each end of, like, each consumer, what they should be knowing as a buyer from a home care agency, and so then they could compare and contrast agencies and see who they feel most comfortable with.
Speaker 1:But we also work with a lot of people in the community. So if somebody's looking for, maybe, an assisted living, we have a lot of partnerships with placement agencies, for an example, and we tell them hey, we're going to give you this person they're going to work well with. Hey, we're going to give you this person, they're going to work well with you, they're going to show you all the different facilities out there based on your budget, based on care, et cetera. So we try to do everything we can, especially for veterans. That is our specialty. So if you're a veteran, we have so many things in place to try to help you navigate the VA system, which is very complex. So that's what we pride ourselves on, and all of our directors in our company do a lot of things for veterans, even outside of the organization. So that's what I would say. That kind of makes us stand apart from others.
Speaker 2:That's great to know too. I know you guys have always been involved in the veteran care piece of this and you really take that to heart and serve the veterans of California very well. And you're right, it's a little confusing and a little time consuming to get all that paperwork together or whatever it is the person needs to get their stuff submitted.
Speaker 2:It's a lot, so it's great that you guys are willing to point them in the right direction and help out with that. Yeah, I would say that the staffing piece, that is, if you find an agency that is on top of it, that's the. That is amazing and this is a people, a very human experience and, just like you said, all of us, you know, have moments or are a flat tire or are sick or whatever. So we're dealing with humans and humans. It's really about trusting the agency that you choose to work with and knowing that, even if there's a moment where someone is going to be late or whatever, you're covered, you're covered. Somebody will help you with whatever it is.
Speaker 2:And you do have a lot of experts in the field from your community. Liaisons are all experts and they've been with you forever. A lot of experts in the field from your community. Liaisons are all experts and they've been with you forever. A lot of them have been around a long time and that speaks volumes because we see so much turnover in home care sometimes, but when you have staff that have worked with you and believe in your mission and vision and are sticking with you for a lot of years. Some of the names I haven't met everybody, but some of the names have been with you for a long time and that really does speak volume from the top all the way down, of people enjoy working for home care professionals.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we even. We still have employees when Andy started this business 20 years ago. So you know, we pride ourself on that and we have very low turnover for our administrative staff and all of us. First and foremost, you have to be passionate about helping people. Right, we're not in this business because we think that we're going to make a lot of money. And, unfortunately, people get into this business because they think that, right, oh, seniors, oh they, the baby boomers, oh, I want to get into that business. It's growing. Margins are very slim in this business, especially here in California, because of all the regulations around pay et cetera. So, there, if you get into this business, or if you are in this business, you have to be passionate about it.
Speaker 1:Myself and Andy, we still go and to seniors house I still do assessments. Right, I want to be passionate about it. Myself and Andy, we still go. And to seniors house I still do assessments. Right, I want to be out there and I want to see how our directors and caregivers are interacting with our customers. Right, it's the old. It's the old Disney adage. Right, have every employee dress up as one of the characters. So, I believe in that and I want to see the experience and I've even done caregiving. It's something that I want every single person that we serve. I want them to be served as my own family member right, and one of my family members currently is on our services, so I know what that feels like and I want them to have the same outcome Again. We're not perfect. It's not always perfect, but we do strive, and everybody in our company strives to be perfect.
Speaker 2:I think anyone that any home care agency that tells you we're the best, we're the greatest and we always do everything right. That in and of itself just can't possibly be true. There's too many people involved, but it's absolutely the safety of having an athlete in behind you is amazing. A team, the people that care that's what it's all about.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:I just want to thank you for taking the time to talk to us, telling us about home care professionals. I know you guys have a lot. You're going to keep growing and you're going to have 10 more offices next year.
Speaker 1:I hope not next year, but yeah.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Don. We appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely.
