A home health business provides qualified personnel to assist people, mostly the aging to maintain independent living at home. With our population projected to be made up of one third of people over 65 within the next 10 years, there will be a number small businesses that will spring up to serve the needs of senior citizens and others in need of assistance.
A home health business pairs qualified workers with people in need. Your home health business will find these qualified individuals and assign them to your clients.
Instructions
Start a Home Health Business
1. Establish your home health business in order to qualify for payments from government programs as well as to legally hire and compensate workers. Each state has its individual certification and licensing requirements for home health aides. Check with local health and human services organizations to determine requirements for people who work in home health businesses in your state.
Home health businesses that receive Medicare reimbursements are required by federal law to pass a competency test. Preparation for this test can be obtained beforehand and is usually a course lasting several days to several months. Home health aides can get voluntary certification from the National Association for Home Care and Hospice (NAHC).
2. Place newspaper ads or even flyers in local community colleges where people are studying to become home health aides or licensed practical nurses to get potential staffers. Work directly with community colleges and home health aide training courses to list your company as an employer. Do background checks including criminal records as well as drug screenings on all potential hires since home health aides work in private homes and often work alone and unsupervised.
3. Institute procedures for gauging potential worker's character, attitudes, and beliefs before hiring. Home health aides work with the elderly, physically disabled, terminally ill, and mentally ill patients and should have the patience required of people in this field. You may want to administer a personality test to potential hires to ensure they have the psychological mettle to deal with the kinds of diverse clients that might come under their care.
4. Clearly define the duties of home health aides and your business' expectations of its employees. Stress the importance of attendance as this is an extremely important quality for a good home health aide. In addition, develop a written roster of potential duties and provide to employees so that they are aware that cooking, grooming, exercising, chauffeuring, changing bed linens as well as surgical dressings, among others will be required of them.
5. Find initial clients for your business by posting flyers at senior living communities and veteran's hospitals. Since women are often caregivers for aged and infirm family members, market to them directly perhaps by leaving flyers in beauty and nail salons. Place small classified ads in local community newspapers.
6. Partner with professional service providers such as internists, geriatric, and other physicians who specialize in elderly patients or with osteopaths or physical therapy centers that encounter people with infirmities that need temporary assistance with living.
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