Expert home care consultant and our good friend Ginny Kenyon focuses on helping home care entrepreneurs get their businesses successfully off the ground.  This blog post, written by Ginny, explains the costs associated with starting various types of home care and home health agencies.  Enjoy!

The Cost of a Home Health/Home Care Agency Start-Up

Throughout the years, Kenyon HomeCare Consulting has had the privilege of assisting successful start-up home health agencies across the country. Although many thoughtful questions are asked, we have noticed that only 10% of those individuals requesting assistance have projected out the assumed cost of starting up. The remaining 90% have given little consideration to the cost of starting a home health agency. If they have thought about it, they tend to grossly underestimate the revenues needed for the first year of operation. Costs of a start up home care agency vary by state, as well as by the type of Home Care agency that an individual may wish to start. The least expensive is the non-skilled Home Care agency, followed by the licensed skilled home care non-Medicare. The most expensive startup is Medicare/Medicaid Home Health and Hospice.

You can also check out this video from 2020, Ankota's "Ultimate Guide to Starting a Home Care Agency:

One of the major reasons new home care businesses fail is because of lack of working capital for the start up phase of the business. The estimated cost to start up a non-skilled Private Pay Home Care agency runs about $40,000 to $80,000, Licensed Home Health non-Medicare $60,000 to $100,000, and Medicare Certified agencies $150,000 to $350,000, depending on the state in which you start your home health agency. Much of the cost is incurred around licensing issues and regulations requiring licensed personnel, computer software and hardware, patient care costs that are paid out of the owner’s pocket and are not recoverable, commercial space for the office and the length of time the state is out until initial review or survey. Additionally, many states now require that all Medicare start up agencies go through an Accreditation organization, which also adds cost, and time to the start up phase.

Anyone thinking about starting up a home care/health agency must first develop a working budget for the first year. There are some basic costs that all home care start-ups share: name and logo development, policy and procedure development if in a licensed state or going for Medicare, computer software and hardware, sales and marketing, recruitment and retention, office furniture, supplies, and equipment, office space rental, plus telephones, and personnel costs, depending on the type of agency and the state and federal rules. For the Medicare agency start up costs, the requirement of paid clinical staff to care for a minimum of ten patients has to be added into the startup budget cost. Those monies, considered part of the startup costs, are not recoverable from the Medicare. In addition, Medicare and the states will require a specified amount of money in a bank account to prove the financial viability of the new organization. All of these elements must be included in the startup budget.

There is one last budget element that must be added: payment to the new owner. This is the most commonly missed budget line. Starting a business is a full time job! The time and energy invested in starting up a home care agency is considerable and requires a line item for reimbursement. Some of the estimated start-up costs stated above are the reimbursement that the owner will need to survive financially while the agency is getting started. Failure to include this expenditure leads many aspiring home care agency owners to work outside the start-up to generate income while they simultaneously try to start the business. This is a sure recipe for failure.

Are you considering starting up a home care/health agency and need some assistance in developing the budget? If so, we’re here to help. Contact Kenyon HomeCare Consulting for a sample budget or call 206-721-5091 for consulting assistance.

Ankota provides software to improve the delivery of care outside the hospital. Today Ankota services home health, private duty care, DME Delivery, RT, Physical Therapy and Home Infusion organizations, and is interested in helping to efficiently manage other forms of care. To learn more, please visit www.ankota.com or contact Ankota.