Home Care

Honor buys Home Instead: one of the newest acquires one of the oldest.  Honor, a recipient of $255 million in total investment (Series D in October, 2020), has pivoted here and there since its $20 million-fueled launch in 2015, always intent on disrupting the home care industry. For a while, many in the industry were skeptical. They viewed it as a threat – see interviewee comments in 2017’s Tech-Enabled Home Care.  Honor began as a home care company, then a home care tech platform company and buyer of smaller home care companies -- bulking up prior to Friday, when it acquired the largest home care company in both the US and UK– Home Instead.  

The home care market is (still) a booming business opportunity.  Home care of various types now augments and even enhances services that not long ago may have been provided by senior housing. Pre-pandemic forecasts indicate 34% annual job growth from 2019-2029, much faster than average, and demand has no doubt been exacerbated during 2020.  Home care workers are also among the lowest paying and least trained occupations. Frail patients, according to insiders, are increasingly being discharged from hospitals directly to home, bypassing rehab nursing homes. At home, these individuals likely still require assistance with activities of dressing, bathing, medication management, food preparation and household tasks.  And many already at home and in assisted living need the same care.

Aging in place – it’s emerged (again) during these Covid-19 times. Déjà vu all over again. But ‘aging in place’ is still a challenge and maybe a pipe dream for seniors in their late 70’s or 80’s.  Consider a few issues for starters:  chronic health conditions, mobility limitations, stairs, snow/ice, driving, dangerous hills for walking, cognitive issues, and social isolation.  You get the idea.  Then there is the cost of 24x7 home care, same as assisted living (which is $67K/year in Massachusetts, for example) or even Genworth’s 44-hours of home care ($53-54K annual).  That may work for the most well-to-do seniors.  But families are still in a position of finding and then managing the care workers, even with agency assistance. So Mom or Dad stays at home as long as feasible and even beyond – and that’s why the home care industry today is booming. And competing for the same workers as senior living firms pay their CNAs.