When Margaret Haynes was appointed CEO of Right at Home in April, she had already established herself as a veteran within the company.
Since 2014, she has served as chief operating officer. She first joined Right at Home in 2011.
What many do not know is that Haynes has not only served as one of the company’s leaders, but she also had the unique perspective of being on the client side during her time with the company.
Right at Home was hired to take care of her mother. For Haynes, the experience underscored the value-add of the care services the company provides.
With this in mind, Haynes is focused on what kind of improvements can be made at Right at Home on all sides.
Overall, the home care franchise company has more than 600 locations in the U.S. and seven other countries.
“We adopt a philosophy of continuous improvement,” she said during a recent conversation with Home Health Care News.
Haynes also said Right at Home’s goal is to “plant additional flags” in new areas and explained why the company is sticking with private pay. Below is the conversation, edited for length and clarity.
HHCN: We last connected with Right at Home on the state of the business in the fall of 2021. Can you recap some of the company’s challenges since then?
Haynes: Like everybody in the industry, we continue to work through the industry challenges of the caregiver shortage, and how can we help our franchise owners deal with that particular shortage. There has been a paradigm shift in the industry over the last couple of years with the pandemic, certainly, exacerbating this. The shift is that there’s much more demand for the services of private-duty home care, and home care in general, than there are caregivers available to provide that critical care.
We certainly are continuing to help our offices work through those challenges. There’s not one single solution. There are different approaches based on different regions that need to be taken. That’s the primary change or initiative that we continue to focus on. We need to constantly be thinking about how best to support the caregivers that are in the home, and how best to support the clients.
You were appointed CEO in April after serving in the role on an interim basis. But you were the company’s COO for many years. How does being a long-time member of Right at Home’s leadership team prepare you to take the helm?
Home care is definitely a complex business. I’ve been with the company since 2011 and started fulfilling the role as the COO in 2014. Not only is home care a complex business, but franchising is a unique and fabulous business model. Neither is something that I had a lot of experience in when I came to Right at Home. Now, having over a decade of experience has given me a broad knowledge and insight, as well as tools that have prepared me to step into the shoes that were filled by Brian Petranick. Allen Hager – who is our founder – and Brian have really built a really strong foundation over the last 27 years.
Due to their strong leadership, and the support that I’ve received being a part of this company, I felt fully prepared to step into the role. It certainly is a bit of a whirlwind in terms of just everything that we’re working through at the moment, but I’m really excited to carry forward their legacy.
In the past, you’ve said that being COO has given you the opportunity to see the business from many different perspectives. Can you elaborate on that?
From a COO perspective, I’ve had the opportunity to really dig into the core operations of the business model and work very closely with our talented franchise owners, as well as our international master licensees. I’ve been in a position to understand the challenges they’re facing in their local markets. I’ve been able to look at the industry itself, from a business perspective, and an operational perspective of how to continue to improve the experience for the client. How do you continue to prove the experience that individual caregivers have with their local Right at Home? How do we, as a corporate office, continue to support the distribution channel that we have?
I’ve also had the unique perspective of being a Right at Home client during my tenure here as well. Right at Home took care of my mom. She had Alzheimer’s, and as her disease progressed, it got to a point where my sisters, my dad and I needed some additional assistance. There aren’t enough words to describe the impact that Right at Home had on me, my sister, my mom and my dad’s life. It was Right at Home that was there with us through the very last part of her days. It made that entire process very peaceful, and one in which as a family, we could be the daughters, my dad could be the husband to his wife, and we had someone there to help continue to keep mom comfortable and safe. Being on the consumer side of it has really solidified what a great value this industry provides to families across the globe.
As a new CEO, is there a program, pilot, or type of partnership that you’re hoping to implement, or go after, that hasn’t been done at Right at Home?
We adopt a philosophy of continuous improvement. We’ve been doing some market research to better understand some changing consumer dynamics. With the aging population, we’re kind of getting ready to shift into a different generation — the baby boomers that will become consumers of the services. But also, how can we support their families? And what about the caregivers who span across lots of generations? We recognize we’ve got four different generations represented in the workforce. How can we continue to understand their unique needs and how we can meet those?
I’ve talked about how the biggest barrier to growth within our industry is the labor shortages and just being able to identify enough caregivers. We know we need to find creative and innovative ways to combat that issue. I’ve challenged the team, our franchise owners, and our network broadly to view this caregiver shortage not as a barrier, or an obstacle, but actually as an opportunity.
Are there any particular M&A priorities or goals for Right at Home?
Each year, we set out a goal of how much, from an expansion perspective, we want to grow. We are certainly very focused on continuing to franchise. We always set goals for how many new franchise flags we want to place in each territory. We still have a lot of green space out there, where we would like to put additional flags.
In 2019, we started bringing on some company-owned locations. We’ve also acquired an independent and flipped it to the Right at Home brand. We’ve also acquired a few of our own franchises that were looking to exit the system, in cases where it was the right timing and we wanted to do something from a company-owned perspective.
We’re looking to add five more company-owned locations, ideally, this year. We are also planning for at least 15 additional flags from a franchisee perspective as well.
Earlier this year when I connected with your predecessor, we spoke about how Right at Home sees the value in further leaning into predominantly private-pay revenue structures. Across the company’s entire franchise network, roughly 75% of revenue comes from its private-pay clientele. Will private pay continue to be the priority moving forward or are there plans to diversify? Why or why not?
We do see private pay continuing to be the primary payer source for our services. The reason is that it is it allows us to really meet the needs of that client and that caregiver.
From my own experience with my mom, there was a symbiotic relationship between home health, hospice and what they provided through mom’s Medicare program. Still, that didn’t meet all the respite needs that we had as a family. The private-pay side coming in and working alongside home health care was the perfect connection.
We have offices today that also operate on the Medicaid waiver side and we certainly love supporting veterans and working with the VA. We also are keeping our eye on what’s happening with Medicare Advantage. We’ll continue to read those tea leaves to see what opportunities are there. At the end of the day, our primary focus is on how can we best meet the needs of families and clients to help them age gracefully wherever they call home.
Are you worried about wage pressures and the rising rates of home care, or have you found that the clientele is usually fine with the price rising?
I am concerned about the wage pressure. I think the wage increases that are happening are good from an overall industry perspective. As pay rates increase, bill rates need to increase. What we don’t know in the different markets is how much price elasticity exists.
I do think overall as an industry, margins are certainly getting compressed, and when your gross margins are getting compressed, then you as a business have to also continue to look at being as efficient as possible with operating costs.
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