St. Joseph Healthcare in Southern California Becoming a “Nurse Next Door” Franchisee-Acquiring 26 Locations With Option for Another 12–Their Current Private Home Care Business To Be Transitioned To This Model

This is interesting and hospitals are under real pressure today to avoid re-admissions as they can be penalized by CMS. The folks that work for the hospital providing this service will now become employees of the franchise location it appears. 

The company is located in Vancouver, Canada and has just under 60 franchise locations in that country.  The company franchisor filings list  $106,000 to $159,000.  The initial franchise fee is $47,000.00 to get started so there’s a lot of money laid out by the hospital system.  The royalty and marketing fees are 6% of gross sales and the average revenue per patient is somewhere around $2000.00.  Nurse Next Door provides all the training for set up, etc. 

Gee home nursing has become just like a fast food franchise you could say.  It appears this service will be used to also take care of patients who are discharged and need home care with recovery as well as long term home care patient needs.  When you look at the car in the picture, I’m sure the franchise dollars might help paint it too:)  Here’s  video on how their call system works.

It’s a big call center that supports the franchises with scheduling and the IT portions of the business.  Here’s another video with more of a view on the nurse or caregiver providing service. 

This will be interesting to see how St. Josephs handles their franchises and will they do their own call center?  We don’t know at this point.  The administrative and management with the hospital seems that it will need to have a few things done differently as well.  BD 

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St. Joseph Health is acquiring 26 Southern California locations from Nurse Next Door, with an option to buy another 12, the companies announced Monday.

The move creates an estimated $50 million revenue line in the future for St. Joseph Health. The company is based in Irvine, California, and currently offers home health care in three California counties, along with operating 16 hospitals, physician organizations, outpatient services and community outreach services.

The Nurse Next Door locations that St. Joseph is acquiring will offer basic companionship, Alzheimer’s and dementia support, among other services.

St. Joseph Health will be engaging general managers for the home care locations, which is slightly different than the typical Nurse Next Door model, in which franchises are owner-operated, Nurse Next Door CEO Cathy Thorpe told Home Health Care News. But Nurse Next Door will be providing training, marketing, and other support as it does for other franchises.

St. Joseph Health’s current private duty home care business will be transitioned into these franchises, Chief Administrative Officer John Bennett told HHCN.

http://homehealthcarenews.com/2016/02/health-system-acquires-26-private-duty-franchises/