Press Release

Can you tell us a little about the history of Accessible Home Health Care and the part you play in the franchise?

My name is Aarif Dahod and I am the CEO and original founder of the company. We entered this space 20 years ago to shake things up in how home health care referrals were obtained and make our services patient care driven.

We remain the only privately owned non venture capital or multiple brand owner based franchise system.

What do you attribute Accessible Home Health Care’s success to?

We are and have always been an innovative company and we are proud to be the first in home health care space to introduce the following:

1) Develop an Emergency Response Plan and successfully lobby the regulators in State of Florida to implement the same as requirement for all home health care agencies.

2) Develop a “Patient Bill of Rights” and seminars to educate the end users in senior communities of their rights to select their own provider and not rely on the referral sources for the same.

3) Refuse to participate in “Quid Quo Pro” system of obtaining patients. We take our message of their rights by advertising directly to end users.

4) Lobby all major LTC insurers to establish Networks with credentialing criteria. The key is requiring professional liability insurance.

5) Establish companywide minimum criteria for caregivers requiring minimum 2 years verifiable experience and pass our company developed test for each discipline of caregivers. Caregivers must adhere to our established “Ten Caregiver’s Commandments”.

6) Develop customized care training and certification program “CALMS” (Compassionate Alzheimer’s & Loss of Memory Support) for Alzheimer’s/ memory loss care. We were the first home health care company to obtain “Joint Commission Accreditation”.

7) Establish an “Accessible On-line Academy” with 24/7 accessibility to all caregivers on patient care and condition related courses and information.

8) Offer all levels of care for every age group up to the maximum level of licensing available in the local area to include companion care, aides and skilled clinical care.

9) Accept and collect from all major insurance carriers (95%) directly. Thus, the patient does not have to pay up-front for the covered services.

10) Accept all payers including Medicare certification based on available licensing.

11) Our entire corporate staff has extensive home health care provider experience.

12) Controlled growth in limiting the number of franchisees on boarded each year to manageable 12 to 15 units annually.

13) Provide our QA payroll/billing support team to our franchisees. This reduces their need to hire internal staff, thus saving them payroll costs and ensuring a higher degree of accuracy which speeds up their cash flow as a result.

14) Through our established “Milton M. Rager Veterans Program” we increase care to veterans and their families as well as offer discounts to veterans that become our franchisees.

Why is home care a good industry for a prospective franchisee?

It is the fastest in demand service. The growth potential for a full service provider such as Accessible is the future of this industry. Home health care expenditure in 2017 exceeded 100 billion dollars and is expected to grow to 241 billion dollars by 2024.

77% of the expenditure is from Medicare. Thus, we obtain Medicare certification for each franchisee where the same is available. It is pointless not to be positioned to capture this revenue base.

Describe the need that Accessible Home Health Care fills in communities.

Accessible provides quality care to seniors by recognizing that our product is our caregivers. They deliver the actual hands-on care to our patients. We are proud to take care of seniors in each community. Under our model of providing all levels of care, we are able to expand the required services as our patients’ needs increase, without requiring our patients to seek multiple providers.

Additionally, by accepting and collecting directly from our patients’ payer sources, we have reduced the financial stress on our patients of having to prepay us and wait for payments from their insurance companies.

How do you set up franchise territories for your franchise?

Due to our controlled growth we have major lucrative territories available for new franchisees. All our franchisees are multiple unit owners. We give our franchisee first right of refusal to all contiguous territories around their exclusive territories.

Furthermore, we do not limit our franchisee to service patients beyond their exclusive territory without purchasing the same, as long as they are not infringing on the exclusive territory of another franchisee.

What kind of experience does a franchisee need to be successful?

We are looking for hands-on entrepreneurs. To qualify, we look for individuals in a position to and committed to 10 to 20 years ownership, rather than short term investors.

Our successful candidates are success driven compassionate individuals who are strong managers.

What does training look like for an Accessible Home Health Care franchisee?

Each of our franchisees are required to attend our 5 days (40 hours) of training at our corporate offices. The training is conducted exclusively by our top 3 Executives. I continue to conduct 60% of the training.

The training is designed to teach our requirements, procedures, recruiting, business management, sales & marketing. Practical procedure is necessary to avoid burn out with nonsense on and off hour calls in a 24/7 business.

Beyond the initial training, most important is ongoing support. We are very proactive in providing unlimited support. The support is provided to each new franchisee by one of the top five company executives with extensive home health care experience. This is one of the reasons why we limit our growth to 12 to 15 new franchisees annually.

How long does the start-up processes typically take?

Depending on the franchisee’s objectives, we work with them in developing the same. The factors to be considered in determining their objectives are the time to obtain the licenses, starting with the basic available services and expanding the services as the additional licenses are granted.

Typical unit is cash flow positive and self sufficient within the first 4 to 6 months.

Our model is based on building a solid foundation with patients requiring long term care and expanding to providing short term care.

What’s next for Accessible Home Health Care in terms of expansion?

With reference to adding new franchisees, we will continue to expand within our existing conservative growth model.

We continue to expand our recruitment and more importantly retention of our caregivers. We have and continue to implement new programs to expand the education and specialized certification of our caregivers. We recognize our caregivers through our “Mrs. Rosette J. Salem Caregiver Recognition Program”.

We are aggressively researching and testing incorporating technology in caring for our patients. The technology we are introducing is to monitor our patients when we are not in the home and to provide a direct means to reach out to their individual clinical caregiver with questions. Our objective in utilizing technology is to intervene prior to accelerating an event that could require a trip to the emergency room leading to hospitalization.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

Yes, we do not measure our success based on the number of new franchise units we add.

We measure our success based on the growth of our franchisees and notably expanding our initiative and innovation in the home health space.

Really, I take our responsibility to make our franchisees successful by supporting them in building a solid asset, while providing compassionate care in their community. Our franchisees have placed a trust in us and I take this very seriously.

We are HOME HEALTH CARE specialist and we utilize franchising as a means of geographically delivering our quality home health care model with adding franchisees that share our vision.