Since its founding just more than a year ago, Phoenix Home Care Inc. has lived up to its name.
Launched three months after founder Phil Melugin’s February 2011 split from his two partners at Integrity Home Care – with lawsuits leveled by both sides – the company now has a geographic footprint stretching from St. Louis to Wichita. As of June, it’s on track to pull in revenues of $16 million this year, up $6 million from projects in April and more than six times the company’s 2011 earnings of $2.5 million.
“The whole concept of the phoenix is one of new beginnings,” Melugin says. “There has just been an incredible response to our message and the product we’re making available to the community.”
In a given week, he says 450 caregivers and attendants provide thousands of hours of in-home medical and daily care to households in Springfield, St. Louis, Columbia and Kansas City.
“And now Wichita,” Melugin says of the city where Phoenix Home Care’s takeover of ProActive Home Care was finalized early last month, adding 150 employees to Phoenix’s payroll.
A plaque in Melugin’s Springfield office commemorates the expansion, noting that the company served its first Wichita client May 30.
Phoenix Home Care employees provide 13,000 weekly service hours to about 600 homes, Melugin says.
The company’s clients range from children with physical and mental disabilities to senior citizens who choose from a menu of five care options that give them varying levels of control.
With consumer-directed care, for example, clients are in charge of day-to-day management, while in-home personal care lets Phoenix take the reins.
Melugin says his company’s clients are split fairly equally into three segments: seniors who are referred to Phoenix Home Care, clients who seek the company out on their own, and members of the sandwich generation, which, as Melugin says, are those adults who realize they need to start parenting their parents.
Phoenix Home Care’s growth far exceeds expectations, Melugin says, and has sustained itself through the ongoing recovery from the recession. He says he’s seen an uptick in caregivers who are looking for work and in clients who qualify for Medicaid or other state funding, which can cover three of Phoenix’s five care packages.
Where the recession has hurt, Melugin says, is in the availability of that state funding, but as the expansion into Kansas shows, that challenge isn’t slowing down the company.
He attributes the company’s rise to its focus on caregivers and clients and for its adherence to Christ-like values of compassion and honesty. Those values are key for the company’s role of caring for its clients, Melugin says.
“In the most private of settings – their homes – it is important that we have a value system,” Melugin says. “It’s at the core of our culture.”
While the dust has barely settled on the expansion into Wichita, Melugin says Phoenix Home Care isn’t done growing, though he declined to provide details before any deals are finalized.
“We definitely have our eyes on additional opportunities,” he says, adding, “We at Phoenix feel very, very blessed.”
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