Kansas City Home Healthcare Company With National Aspirations
This is a story about a young entrepreneur who wants a piece of a $93 billion pie. In 2016, she moved back to Kansas City from “living her best life” as a management consultant to join her physician mother re-energize a company that’s been serving its community since 2001.
Cristina Betts is very easy to talk to. And she’s extremely open to talking about her company, MDHomeCare. That’s partly, perhaps, because she has some very big goals. Such as building a national brand in a $93 billion niche segment of the healthcare industry; it’s a highly fragmented market. Since joining as CEO in 2016, she helped the company deliver a 15% better revenue the following year, reaching nearly $300,000. She’s on target to deliver the same growth in 2018. This may seem like a drop in the bucket. But MDHomeCare merely serves 1% of the eligible patients in Kansas City. And Cristina is wrapping up a big contract that will expand the patient base in one fell swoop and give a huge boost to the target revenue in 2018. This is where the potential for exponential growth comes in. She seems capable of doing it. As a management consultant in healthcare IT, she is well versed in the public health sector and healthcare insurance. She knows what she’s doing.
Let’s Talk Operations, Industry, Competitions And All That Jazz
MDHomeCare offers an entire range of primary healthcare delivered at home. But their growth opportunity lies in chronic health care. This is the betting horse that many are eyeing at the moment, including Cristina, for increased revenue.
Currently, there are three staff doctors serving part time in the company. In addition, there is a full-time nurse practioner and 14 additional support staff. Given the patient base, there is plenty of capacity left for growth.
While the company serves anyone homebound older than 16 years, 75–80% of the patients are either Medicare or Medicaid participants. They mainly come through referrals. MDHomeCare will also send their nurse practitioner to homes to assess a patient’s circumstance when someone self-refers. The company takes commercial insurance also.
Just like any viable opportunity, MDHomeCare is swimming with some sharks in the water. One of them is the insurance companies themselves. They have recently started hiring nurse practitioners for chronic care management that puts them first in line before external service providers such as MDHomeCare. Beyond that, there are two additional companies operating locally in Kansas City and competing directly. One of them is a local company with a different business model and the other is a national company.
With so much room to saturate the Kansas City market and leap forward to build a national brand, Cristina has decided to take the organic route. That means she does not anticipate the need for any capital infusion. The company has no debt on its balance sheet, and outright owns the building where its headquartered.
How Is This Impact, You Ask?
According to Commonwealthfund, there are 7 million homebound patients in the U.S. This number is outdated and likely to be grossly underreported as it does not include millions of younger adults suffering from catastrophic or disabling conditions. Among these homebound patients, only fewer than 12% reported receiving healthcare at home. What is more interesting, according to the report, is that that there were substantial savings to these patients receiving home health services over traditional services. While healthcare itself is not impact investing, offering affordable services that reaches patients of all ages, especially homebound elderly and disable persons, can be seen as alignment with SDG3 (UN Sustainable Development Goals). MDHomeCare is doing just that, whether they’ve realized it or not — generating 100% of their revenue from offering affordable healthcare to homebound patients of all ages because they just don’t have the ability to leave home to go see a doctor. Now that’s a cool story, bruh!
