How to Start a Home Health Agency with No Money?

If you are thinking of how to start a home health agency with no money, you’re at the right place. In this post, we’ll guide you through the process of starting an agency with no investment of your own and turning it into a profitable venture.

A home health agency provides healthcare services for people at home. There are different types of home healthcare, such as medical and non-medical.

Before we get started with the guide, we want to clear up some of the rudimentary details.

Understanding more about Home Health Agencies and their Types

What is a Home Health Agency?

We have described what a home health agency is right at the start of this post. However, we do want to delve in somewhat deeper and give you a better idea.

Home healthcare can be understood as the health-related services and assistance that are provided by a professional caregiver to a client in their home. This type of care is for people who are not afflicted by a condition or sickness that induces them to be admitted to a hospital, but who still need help in their daily lives due to old age or an ailment.

Medical and Non-Medical Home Healthcare

There are two different types of home healthcare that can be engaged for a patient/client.

Medical Healthcare

Non-Medical Healthcare

Medical healthcare involves not only assistance in day-to-day living but also medical supervision as well as the performance and administration of minor procedures and medicine. For example: An aged person afflicted with Diabetes could require assistance in daily tasks such as eating, dressing, etc., along with medical care such as checking blood sugar levels, administering insulin, etc.

Non-medical healthcare, on the other hand, involves assistance in day-to-day living only. It does not involve the handling or supervision of any medical conditions, nor does it involve the prescription or performance of any medicine or clinical procedure.   For example: An aged person suffering from weak joints would require non-medical healthcare so that they would be able to do the day-to-day chores that involve any type of long-duration walking, lifting, standing, etc.

How much does it usually cost to start a home health agency?

The costs to start a home health agency can vary on a number of different factors. However, various sources have provided a ballpark figure that you can take as an initial assumption when getting started.

According to this source, the costs for starting a healthcare agency depending on the scope and size of the business can be described thus:

• A private pay home care agency (where people pay out of pocket for the services) can need around $40,000 to $80,000
• A licensed home health care non-Medicare agency can need around $60,000 to $100,000 (these agencies are not covered by the Medicare funding program)
• A Medicare-certified agency can need around $150,000 to $350,000

How to Start a Home Health Agency with No Money?

1.  Think of a name and create your business

The first step that you have to take in starting your home health agency is to think of a name and have it registered.

Keeping the right name for your home health agency is very important. You need to have a name that has the following properties:

• It should be unique and original. In other words, there should not be any agencies and companies with the same name already existing.
• It should be descriptive. The name of the agency should convey what type of agency it is. You should use a word like “Medical” or “Healthcare” in the name so that anyone reading it automatically understands what services it provides.
• The name should be easy to remember and pronounce. Since your agency would be responsible for providing healthcare, it is important for the name to be easily memorable and recognizable. If a patient or client ever has to inform anyone about your agency for help, they should be able to do it easily.
• Since you will need to have an online presence for your agency, you should also check and see if the domain for that name is available or not.

If your agency is going to be limited to a specific geographical location, it can also be a good idea to add the name of the place in the name of the company itself.

For example, if you are going to start a home care agency in NY, you can put “New York” or “NY” in your agency’s name so that it is easier to find and identify. The same goes for starting a home health agency in Florida or any other location.

2.   Get your business registered and acquire the needed permits and licenses

After these steps, once you figure the name out, you need to have your company officially registered. Depending on where you are, the exact process for this can be different. But the main gist of it is that you have to visit the relevant government offices, submit the forms and the registration request along with any required dues, and that’s mostly it.

Of course, a home health care agency is not like any other business. There are various licenses/permits that you require before providing healthcare services.

Depending on the type of services that you’re providing, the required licenses/permits could be different. For example, if you are providing non-medical home care services, then you would not need a medical license. Your employees would not have to be compulsorily licensed with a limited training period, etc.

Once again, the exact steps that you have to take during all of this depend on where you are and what type of agency you are looking to start. It is best to check with the local government bodies regulating all of these affairs to get an idea of the necessary requirements and prerequisites.

You can also look this up on the Internet by doing a search like “What licenses do I need to start a home health care business.”

3.  Look for grants and sponsor programs/investors

While it is possible for someone to start a home health agency with no money of their own, it’s not possible for one to run without any money at all. You need to have sufficient funds to cover the start-up costs for home health care business and to hire people to provide the marketed services.

There are various ways in which you can secure funding for your home health agency.

• One way to get funding for your agency is to look for grants allocated by local government organizations. Grants to start a home health care business can be easy to obtain—especially in places where such services are scarce, to begin with.
• Another way to get funding is to look for investors who want to become a part of a home health agency as a business venture.

The exact amount of money/funds that you can get for your agency depends on what type it is. For a medical healthcare agency, the funds required/available from grants, etc., would be higher than a non-medical agency. In other words, a non-medical home health startup business package would be less costly than a medical one.

4.  Create a business plan/structure and allocate a budget

Once you have your name registered and the funds available, the next thing to do is to create a plan on how you’re going to run the business, hire people, market your services, charge your customers, and so on. Most importantly, you also have to decide how you’re going to spend the money that you’ve acquired so that the agency can start generating revenue.

A business plan is what dictates this all.

Creating a business plan is a major and often time-consuming task. There are various steps that you have to take when making one. We looked through the internet and found that this source provides a comprehensive guide on how you can do it.

5.  Hire a professional staff

Although it’s important to be meticulous about the hiring process when you’re running any type of company, it becomes even more imperative when you’re running a home health agency.

Since home healthcare providers have to be present inside the client’s homes and take part in all sorts of personal affairs, it is important for them to be reliable, trustworthy, and upright people.

• If you are running a medical healthcare service, then it means you will have to hire licensed professionals. The individuals who undergo all the necessary processes and steps to become licensed professionals are easy to find and hire because their integrity and reliability are established in their credentials.
• On the other hand, if you are running a non-medical healthcare service that does not necessarily require medical professionals, you have to be more meticulous. In this sort of scenario, it is imperative to run extensive background checks and verify all the people that you take on your team.

Of all the steps that we’ve mentioned in this guide on how to start a home health agency with no money, this one is among the most important.

6.  Market your agency and find clients

After creating your agency and securing the funding, etc., the next thing you need to do is make sure that people get to know about it.

As is the case with any other company or business, marketing is a fundamental step that you have to take in order to increase exposure and garner leads/customers.

There are different ways in which you can market your home healthcare agency. Nowadays, thanks to the prevalence of the Internet, there are various digital marketing methods that you can try out without a lot of investment and effort.

1. One thing that you should prioritize doing is creating a website for your agency. A website helps you establish an online presence and a place where people can easily find you. Plus, by working on the SEO of your website, you can get it to become a source of organic leads and customers.
2. You can also try other methods of digital marketing such as email marketing. You can create an email campaign to get in touch directly with people who may be interested in hiring home healthcare.

Wrapping Up

We’re going to bring this post to a close right here.

So, if we come to the question of how to start a home health agency with no money, the answer is that it is possible, and quite easy if you know what you’re doing. You can start an initiative that focuses on providing help to people who need it, and you can also make it a profitable business venture for yourself.

In the post above, we’ve looked at the main steps that you have to follow to get started. We hope it was helpful and that you have a good idea of where to begin