Building, integrating and scaling home care groups.
My buy-and-build approach: home care providers grow into one group through standardised structures, uniform processes and central billing. This is the basis for fast integration, predictable margins and efficient management – for successful care.
Care as a system: what works for restaurant chains also works in care.
System care – a transferable operating model. Every company in the group is set up the same way. On site, the director of nursing runs the care operation; support functions such as billing, controlling, HR and administration are handled centrally. The local brand stays; the process and IT infrastructure is the same everywhere.
One organisation for all
The same roles and processes in every company – and one shared KPI system, monthly for every location. The numbers are the basis for comparing locations, deriving strategy and measures, and steering each company as well as the group as a whole. Management by numbers, not by gut feeling.
Billing centre with a control function
In smaller care businesses, the person who did the billing usually leaves together with the owner. The billing centre takes over this function from day one – including its own receivables management. At the same time it acts as an independent control for complete and correct billing. This ensures that every service delivered is also billed correctly – sustainably.
Roadmap and playbook
The roadmap governs how a company joins the group: from talking to the team before signing to integrating it into the group’s ERP, data cloud and internal processes. The playbook then standardises the internal processes of the care business itself. This secures margins and makes growth repeatable: every acquisition follows the same path to success.
An open error culture
Mistakes happen – what matters is how they are handled. Errors are raised openly; we look for the cause, not for someone to blame. What counts is the employees’ trust that the focus is on solutions, not on assigning blame. Every new company brings new ideas and best practices – both feed into the continuously learning playbook. Only learning organisations get better.
Growth through good advice
Only those who have the clients can increase density and grow. Our care advisors are given the time to accompany and advise people in need of care and their families comprehensively, beyond the statutory minimum requirements. Competence builds trust, good advice creates clients – and home help and nursing care gain plannable organic growth.
What holds the building blocks together is working together. Managing directors, directors of nursing and their deputies talk regularly across all companies. Shared solutions, but also personal contact, turn individual companies into a group.
Staff are the most important success factor in home care. They only become a bottleneck when they are managed badly.
Bringing teams along
In every acquisition I talk to the core team before signing. Those who stay have to want the acquisition.
Recruiting international nurses
More than 100 completed immigration procedures since 2018 and a self-developed portal that links immigration with integration – presented in the Bavarian State Parliament. Today a fixed pillar of recruitment in the companies I manage.
Retaining employees
You can only retain employees if you know their problems and motives. That is why I hold many one-to-one conversations – to understand what is on people’s minds and where we as a company can help, including in difficult personal situations. The result: group-wide staff turnover of 9.2% – in an industry where turnover is the norm.
Training the next generation
Two trainees per company per year – tomorrow’s qualified nurses come from our own ranks.
A difficult position is still a position – the ramp-up just takes longer.
Home care providers rarely get into difficulty because of poor care, but because of billing, staffing and a lack of management control. That is exactly where I start – step by step.
Stabilise
Secure liquidity, put structure in place, get billing and receivables under control, keep the team on board.
Clean up
Make the numbers transparent, bring staff and operating costs to benchmark, organise processes along the playbook.
Take off
Increase utilisation and growth – as a stand-alone business or as part of a group.
Acquisition of a home care provider with negative equity, gross profit close to zero and liabilities in the six-figure range. Within three months the business was self-sustaining again – including debt service – with liquidity secured through factoring. Expensive contracts were then terminated – creating room to invest in staff again and to grow.
Ten years of building and integrating home care and medical homecare groups.
Diplom-Ökonom (master’s-level degree in economics, University of Augsburg) and Bachelor of Business Administration (Washburn University, USA). In the healthcare market since 2000.
Who I am the right partner for.
Investors
Are you planning a platform in home care or looking to scale an existing group? I bring the operating system for it: organisation, billing, integration – and the experience to integrate acquisitions without friction.
Owners
Are you thinking about succession for your care service? I am happy to talk to you in confidence about how your team, your patients and your name can be placed in good hands.
Special situations
For insolvency administrators, banks and investors: is a care provider in your proceedings, loan book or portfolio in difficulty? I take on operational responsibility as interim managing director or provide a well-founded assessment of its situation and going-concern prospects.
Let’s talk – in confidence.
I will gladly send you my detailed executive profile on request.