How to start a Home Healthcare Agency

NedRN · Feb 16, 2015

Start with a Google search and find the regulatory body for California. That is a good starting point.

I wouldn't try it cold. Work for an agency first to learn the business from the ground up.

overtonis · Feb 17, 2015

First let me say that starting your own home health agency represents the best upside of any nursing niche I have studied. That being said, there is a TON of work to do. You will need to wear multiple hats: entrepreneur, manager, worker, negotiator. A friend is in process of doing this. Their biggest challenge is getting Liability Insurance and setting up your agency that medicare will accept. Here is a list of services that medicare will pay for: Medicare Interactive - Types of home health care that Medicare will pay for. This is good starting point to brainstorm the ethos of your business.

NedRN · Feb 17, 2015

Reading your post about starting up a scrubs company was intriguing. I will disagree with your comment about home health agencies being the best upside of nursing niches. Travel nursing requires virtually no capital or regulatory hurdles and can be started with one nurse. For the person with the right skill set who wants to make real money, there is no comparison with local agencies. It is almost unlimited as was demonstrated by the two largest agencies in the country, American Mobile and Cross Country, both having revenues exceeding one billion dollars a year. Both were very small startups with a nurse involved.

Home health is obviously a rapidly expanding field since the ACA and you can have a very nice business income from starting such an agency. But the startup hassles are much larger, the workload is greater, and the ultimate growth potential is relatively limited.

Mind you, I set my own goals much lower so this is just hypothetical for me. I don't like the agency business especially, I only did it to cut out the middleman for my own contracts. But it was easy. I hire other travelers to feel more like a real business and for fun, not to stop working as a nurse. A bad employee takes all the fun out of the business for me, I just enjoy the thrill of landing contracts.