By Stephen Tweed
As a home care business strategist and industry researcher, one of the things I’ve been doing for over a decade is monitoring the Forces and Trends that are shaping the future of Home Care.
For 2023, I’ve identified the Top Ten Trends that will affect the future of your home care company, and the clients you serve. As a CEO of a leading company in our industry, part of your role is to pay attention to the environment in which you operate, and the patterns of change that will affect your operating environment. We want to help you do that by being your go-to source for facts, data, information, and knowledge about home care in America.
Top Ten Trends Shaping Your Future.
Trends are patterns of change. By monitoring the changes taking place in our industry, you can anticipate what might happen and prepare your organization to deal with that change. We are not about predicting the future. My crystal ball is broken. But I have had some very interesting success anticipating what might happen in the future by paying attention to these patterns of change. Let’s take a quick look at the Top Ten. Then I’ll send you additional updates on each trend as they occur. 
- Private Equity and Industry Consolidation are shaping the landscape of home care. We have observed major changes in home care over the past five years as private equity and venture capital firms have entered our industry and acquired software companies, home care franchise organizations, and large independent home care companies. This is shifting the nature of competition in many local markets.
- Increasing Consumer Awareness in causing increased expectations for Home Care Companies. Many home care companies we work with were formed because a family member had a bad experience trying to find in-home care for a family members. Today there are 26,000 home care companies, and consumers are more aware of home care than ever before. The COVID Pandemic in 2020 really raised awareness for home care as patients in nursing homes and assisted living died from COVID exposure.
- Competition is shifting as home care companies scale. Tied directly to industry consolidation and increasing consumer awareness is the growing number of very large home care companies. When we started the Home Care CEO Forum in 2013 and started our first Home Care Mastermind Group, $5 million in annual revenue was a very large home care company. Today we see a number of companies that are generating $100 million or more in annual revenue, and our Top 5% Group is made up of companies that generate between $10 million and $30 million.
- Third Party Payers are paying attention to home care. A decade ago, most home care was paid for privately. With the introduction of the Affordable Care Act, we saw expanded growth of Medicaid Home Care. The past few years, we have seen increased home care revenue from Long Term Care Insurance, and Veterans Administration. We have heard a lot of buzz about Medicare Advantage Plans, but so far not many home care companies are seeing much revenue there. However, we expect to see a significant increase in home care revenue coming from payer sources other than private pay and Medicaid.
- Artificial Intelligence is becoming a Game Changer in Home Care Technology. AI is all the buzz, and we’re having conversations with thought leaders in our industry and with leaders in tech companies about how AI will affect home care. Stay tuned as there is much more coming in this trend.
- Top Tier Leaders are more focused on Data Oriented Decision Making. As home care companies grow larger, their leaders are also becoming more sophisticated and looking for facts, data, information, and knowledge to make key strategic business decisions. We have been working closely with software companies and benchmarking data in home care to help you get the information you need to make these decisions. And information begins with Data. (See the Four Elements of Your Data Stream)
- Top Teams are Paid for Performance, not for doing tasks. If you know me at all, you know that my favorite mantra is … “What gets measure gets managed, what gets rewarded gets repeated.” To get superior performance, you need to reward your team for the results they achieve. We are continuing to work with our mastermind members, and doing more research, on pay for performance in home care.
- Companies that are overcoming the Caregiver Recruiting and Retention Crisis are leading industry growth. We’ve been following and working on the Caregiver Recruitng and Retention Crisis since 2006. I wrote the book in Conquering the Crisis in 2017. We see clearly that those companies who are experiencing industry-leading growth are those that have overcome the recruiting and retention crisis.
- There is a 180 degree shift from “Customer First” to “Caregiver First” company culture. Part of overcoming the crisis is putting caregivers first. We are seeing more and more leading companies who are consciously shifting their culture from Customer First the Caregiver First. The result is significant improvements in recruiting, caregiver satisfaction, retention, and client satisfaction.
- Top Tier Leaders are learning The Power of the Mastermind. We introduce the Mastermind Concept to home care in 2013 with the Five Million Dollar Mastermind Group. That group is today known as the Top 5% Group, and they are still together. We’ve added four other groups and have a sixth group starting in January of 2024. There also several other firms in home care who have tried to copy our approach and form home care mastermind groups. And the large franchise companies have brought their top franchisees together in Performance Groups. The purpose of all of these mastermind type groups is to share ideas, solve problems, and support one another. We are seeing that leaders in top tier home care companies really want to get together with other leaders of similar sized home care companies who are not competitors to solve problems and share ideas in an open, safe setting.
This Blog- Home Care Trends Report – and our weekly newsletter, Home Care CEO Report will bring you regular updates on the forces and trends shaping the future of home care.
Ongoing Research at Leading Home Care
As many of you know, I sold one of my businesses in early 2023, so I’m refocusing my work. Jensen Jones and his company Jensen, Morgan, and Jones have acquired the Home Care CEO Forum and the five Mastermind Groups. I’ll still be working with Jensen to lead the Top 5% Home Care Mastermind, and to help him attract new members to the other groups.
I’ll also be more focused on Home Care Industry Research to help our industry and it’s leaders gather the facts, data, information, and knowledge to make better strategic business decisions.
What do you want to know about home care?
What do you want to know about your local marketplace?
What do you want to know about your competitors?
Let us help get answers to your questions about our industry, and the companies that make up this fastest growing sector of health care in America.
