Elder care spawns business opportunities

Prominent Sarasota area immigration attorney Chris Jaensch sees big opportunity in the growing industry of helping families navigate the complicated world of elder care.

That opportunity, Jaensch hopes, will be in IKOR, a Pennsylvania-based franchise business that provides health care advocacy and guardianship services for families with elderly or disabled relatives. Jaensch recently opened the first IKOR office on the Gulf Coast, an investment of more than $100,000.

“With the demographic trends, IKOR serves a real need in the Sarasota-Bradenton area,” Jaensch tells Coffee Talk. “IKOR is an element of doing good, plus it's good business.”

A nurse and health care executive, Patricia Maisano, founded IKOR in 2000 in suburban Philadelphia, when she capitalized on a market need for health care advocacy for families. The company launched a franchise program in 2010, and so far there are two other IKORs in Florida, including one in Lakeland.

Jaensch hired area entrepreneur Robert Galkoff to oversee day-to-day operations of the Sarasota-Bradenton IKOR office. Galkoff has owned businesses in England and in Sarasota, including a marketing firm and a hair salon. Galkoff hired two nurses, a bookkeeper and a few other professionals to help make the IKOR office a place where clients can get a wide variety of assistance. A focus of the office is to work with people outside of Florida who care for elderly parents in the area.

Galkoff says the key to IKOR is to bring simplicity to an overwhelming process for clients. He and his team will work with everyone from caregivers to estate lawyers to trust officers to facilitate a process where clients, and their families, have a clear plan to follow. Another important task IKOR does, Galkoff tells Coffee Talk, is to make sure the client's medical providers carry out the agreed treatment plan.

Galkoff says the office, IKOR Suncoast Advocates, has grown quickly since it opened in June. “This is a business that's really needed,” says Galkoff. “We are the only people in the country who do it to this level.”