Geriatric Shift

Geriatric Shift

health care strategy by Mark Gordon | Managing Editor

An established Gulf Coast home health care company is trying to avoid complacency - and embrace growth - by combining technology with elder care.

Sue Wise would be perfectly happy growing her home health care business 5% or so a year. Some years growth is flat, and even that's all right, too.

After all, the business, Take Care, long ago surpassed her dreamiest expectations: What the Kalamazoo, Mich. native started from scratch in 1995 with four employees in a tiny office has since grown to 600 employees spread over three offices in Sarasota and Manatee counties.

The Sarasota company, one of the largest home health care providers on the Gulf Coast, passed $15 million in annual revenues last year, finishing at $15.7 million, a 6.4% increase over the $14.75 million it had in 2006 revenues.

And the employee and revenue increases occurred simultaneously with a growth in industry validation. Over the last four years, for example, the company has regularly won reader appreciation awards in several Sarasota and Bradenton newspapers and magazines - the Oscars of the fragmented home health care industry, a heavily state regulated field.

Still, Wise considers growth a mere outcome of making solid health-care decisions as opposed to a stated goal. Indeed, Wise often seems more concerned with the little things, such as singing happy birthday over the phone to a company van driver or sending poinsettias to clients during the Christmas season. Big things, from paying for the best equipment to providing constant and ample employee training get ample attention, too.

"When it comes to a decision on health care," says Wise, "the health care decision always wins out over business decisions."

But Wise, who holds both a nursing degree and an MBA, could be looking at another major growth spurt as the result of her latest health care-first decision. Specifically, that decision was the company's recently announced partnership with My Health Care Manager, an Indianapolis-based national geriatric care firm specializing in helping seniors and their families choose and follow a health care option through proprietary software.

So in addition to actually going into homes and providing a range of services, from bathing to administering medication, Take Care nurses and employees will now be able to facilitate complete medical plans for all of its clients and their families. The My Health Care Manager system essentially serves as a Web-based individualized medical handbook.

"To be fair to our clients, we couldn't continue to grow while offering the same services we gave them five years ago," says Wise. "It's so exciting to see what we could bring to our clients with this."

'Intellectual capital'

The deal marks a strategy shift for both Wise and Alan Stanford, the founder of My Health Care Manager, who lives part of the year on Longboat Key. My Health Care Manager currently has about 30 clients in Sarasota, through an office it opened in 2006. That office will close as part of the partnership with Take Care, announced April 1, and the clients will be transferred to Take Care's caseload.

In return, Take Care will license My Health Care Manager's software and training programs, becoming the first company in the country to do so. Stanford, who got into the geriatric care business after three personal experiences involving caring for his parents and in-laws, says the key to the program lies in its comprehensive planning process.

The My Health Care Manager staff doesn't provide medical care, although employees can, and have, accompanied patients to the hospital and doctor's offices. Instead, the program works by setting up a secure Web site for each patient. The site is information-heavy, with data such as physician notes, medication counts and insurance reports.

A portal like that, say Wise and Stanford, is especially useful to elderly snowbirds and their families, so everyone involved in the care process can access information, whether they are in Fort Myers or Flint, Mich. It's not an accident, therefore, that Stanford targeted Florida and its high amount of snowbirds as a good place to do business.

"The whole idea," says Stanford, "is that nobody has used this kind of intellectual capital to solve these kinds of issues."

Of course, being in the medical and health care industry, there can be high costs connected with such personalized service. Some plans start at $100 an hour and up, with price breaks as the hours grow. Some private insurance companies will pay for the service, but Medicare or Medicaid don't cover it.

Both Stanford and Wise consider the current number of 30 clients simply a starting point, and a low one at that. Instead, they are predicting that combining compassionate nursing care with a standardized data program will be an easy sell, especially on the Gulf Coast, where the demographics are a perfect fit.

Wise is so confident the partnership will be successful that she recently leased an additional 2,000 square feet of space to the current 4,000 square feet it currently occupies in a Bee Ridge Road medical office park, about three miles west of Interstate 75. The new space will be used partially to train Take Care employees on My Health Care Manager software.

What's more, while stopping short of saying it's a certainty, Wise says she could foresee the company opening new offices, possibly south of Sarasota County as a result of the partnership with My Health Care Manager.

A quick marriage

The partnership is actually a whirlwind romance between two companies that didn't really know they needed each other. Indeed, at first Stanford was going to expand into the Fort Myers and Naples market, not Sarasota.

But when the Cleveland Clinic hospital branch in Naples struggled to find a market, Stanford altered his plan and decided to make his Sunshine State debut in Sarasota. He initially thought he would grow the company on his own and called Wise one day last year just to check out one of the bigger players in the home health hare market.

"It developed into a marriage," says Stanford, "rather than a date." Adds Wise: "I had no idea of the depth that this kind of program offered."

The looming challenge in the marriage now is one that constantly confounds many Gulf Coast executives: Hiring and retaining the best employees. The challenge could be even more pronounced in the health care industry, which has a somewhat fickle employee base with a turnover rate rivaling the restaurant industry.

A perfect illustration of that turnover can be seen in Take Care's employee numbers. The company, says Wise, has about a 20% annual turnover rate - and that's considered a low number in the industry, about half as low as the industry average. Employees, says Wise, are the backbone of the company because the product it sells, with or without My Health Care Manager, is essentially service. And that service is often provided during emotional or difficult times.

"We can always just go out and buy a new computer," says Wise, but "it's extremely important we hire the right people."

Take Care Home Health Care

Year Revenues Growth 2005 $14.8 million

2006 $14.75 million (0.3%)

2007 $15.7 million 6.4%

REVIEW SUMMARY

Industry. Health care

Business. Take Care Private Home Health Care, Sarasota

Key. The company shifts its strategy by investing in a software program aimed at redefining geriatric care.