Jeff salter

senior care franchisin

hOw the landScape OF the SeniOr induStry haS changed tO Keep up with a BOOming SeniOr pOpulatiOn

As more and more seniors choose to age at home, these brands are rising to the challenge by providing unique services with regularly scheduled home maintenance, a range of in-home care options and physical therapy.

According to recent AArP data, 77% percent of adults 50 and older want to remain in their homes for the long term. It’s a trend that has continued to grow as a result of the CoVId-19 pandemic, nurse shortages and the rise of telehealth, positioning the senior care industry for major growth over the next 15 to 20 years.

To cater to this increased demand and opportunity for growth, several franchise brands are navigating significant expansion, emerging as clear industry leaders and finding unique, effective ways to help seniors successfully age in place.

truBlue total house care

TruBlue Total House Care, for which I serve as president, is the only national provider that specializes in total house care for seniors, both inside and out. In addition to handyman services, ongoing maintenance and repairs, yard work and seasonal projects, we are certified to provide home safety assessments, home improvements and modification projects to improve the overall safety and quality of life for seniors at home.

With medical technology helping people live longer, many seniors expect to age in the home they’ve had for decades. But aging in place becomes increasingly more difficult without proper home modifications and maintenance. TruBlue addresses that problem head-on by performing thorough safety assessments for each home before modifying the space accordingly to make it safer and more comfortable for seniors, reducing the risk of falls and other health hazards.

And while most at-home senior care services focus on light housekeeping, bathing and meal prep, TruBlue offers support both inside and outside of the home to help seniors age safely in place for longer. Whether that means changing a lightbulb, raking leaves or making largescale adjustments to the home, TruBlue provides house care services that are designed to keep seniors comfortable in the home.

After seeing strong growth in 2021, doubling our year-over-year revenue for the second straight year and adding 18 new franchise locations so far in 2022, we are well on our way to reaching our year-end goal of opening 40 new TruBlue locations and reaching 100 total units in operation. With awareness around the importance of aging in place skyrocketing in the wake of the pandemic, TruBlue Total House Care has secured several nationwide partnerships with senior care providers this year, and prospective franchisees are increasingly recognizing the strength of the TruBlue business model.

inhome therapy

InHome Therapy is another senior care brand seeing significant growth. The first-of-a-kind Home Therapy as a Service (HTaaS) company is building a nationwide community of talented and passionate therapists equipped to meet the demands of a changing healthcare landscape. As labor challenges quickly become the number-one headache for business owners — and as the demand amongst aging baby boomers outpaces the available labor force — physical, occupational and speech therapists are in short supply.

“With medical technology helping people live longer, many seniors expect to age in the home they’ve had for decades.”

In an effort to close that gap between increased demand and decreased practitioners, most staffing agencies act as traditional brokers, identifying qualified therapists and assigning them to patients. This method is often ineffective when it comes to retention, and InHome Therapy aims to bring a more relationship- and community-oriented model to the industry by investing in training therapists and providing ongoing support throughout their careers.

InHome Therapy leverages its unmatched systems, processes and tools to unlock a new approach for delivering sustainable and measurable results to home therapy patient care, ensuring that patients, agencies and therapists rise together. The brand offers ongoing training and continuing education, and most importantly, the leadership team really listens carefully to the needs of the therapists in the field, resulting in a stronger community, more career development opportunities and a greater emphasis on the purpose-driven reason therapists join the industry in the first place. This year, the InHome Therapy brand has continued growth by expanding its talent pool with the goal of hiring more than 200 full-time therapists across all markets within the next four months, growing its sales team by hiring eight new full-time market development managers, expanding the business further in the states in which they currently operate. Earlier this year, for example, InHome Therapy grew its footprint by 10% in Western Florida and Los Angeles with the acquisition of Contract Therapy Services, Inc., a therapy company that provides physical, occupational and speech therapy. The company also signed contracts with leading home health agency offices across Indiana, with the plan of treating patients in 57 of Indiana’s 92 counties by year’s end. “ While most at-home senior care services focus on light housekeeping, bathing and meal prep, TruBlue offers support both inside and outside of the home .”

right at home

Right at Home is a fast-growing in-home senior care franchise that boasts 600plus locations worldwide. The brand’s caregivers provide a range of in-home care options for seniors and adults with disabilities, including helping with dressing and hygiene, providing medication reminders, and providing transportation to medical appointments. In the wake of the pandemic, more families are looking to move loved ones out of assisted living facilities and bring them back home where the families have more control over their loved ones’ safety, making in-home care even more important in the healthcare industry, especially with the rise of telehealth and hospital-at-home models.

Looking ahead, the healthcare industry is going to need more companies like Right at Home to work alongside episodic care providers. For example, in many cases, an incident will occur and a doctor will approve a home healthcare provider to come to see a patient. The problem is that once the specific episode is over, the patient is expected to return to normal life. With Right at Home, ongoing home care is requested by the family, not by a doctor responding to a specific incident. In this way, Right at Home offers franchisees access to a great symbiotic relationship with other healthcare providers. As a result, while many other businesses struggled, Right at Home saw major expansion during the COVID-19 pandemic and plans on adding another 15 franchise locations by the end of this year. Overall, the senior population is expected to reach over 80 million by 2040, and by finding unique ways to satisfy that population’s expanding and evolving needs, brands like TruBlue, InHome Therapy and Right at Home are well-positioned to mirror that growth.