2026 Dynamic Dozen No. 8: Phoenix Home Care & Hospice

SBJ: What has been key to your recent growth?
Phil Melugin: A combination of need and availability. There is a major need for the services we provide: keeping seniors, disabled individuals in their homes and also helping people transition from acute care settings to their home. Availability of staff to do the work has been a critical piece of the overall success leading to growth.

SBJ: What is most important in employee attraction and retention for a field that typically has a high turnover rate?
Melugin: It’s really checking all the boxes. We provide a very competitive compensation package that includes solid health benefits, solid paid-time-off benefits, all of the foundational things that quality employees are looking for and that they expect. Then giving employees a chance to be part of a really special company with a strong culture. They feel like they’re part of the company. They’re a lot more likely to tell other individuals, “Hey, you should give Phoenix a try. You should come to work at the company I’m working at.” That has helped significantly with our recruiting efforts.

SBJ: What has the company’s growth enabled you to do?
Melugin: It has allowed us to pay our employees more. It has allowed us to offer better benefits. It’s allowed us to establish really good structure and information systems within the company. And it has allowed us to expand the company. It’s given us the capital needed to continue to grow and to look at new opportunities, either service lines or new territories.

SBJ: How do you keep fast growth sustainable?
Melugin: Making sure you continue to scale with good management that stays ahead of the growth; that you have systems that are serving the needs of your employees. When you’re effectively doing that, the needs of the population you serve, our clients and our patients, are never in question. You are working hard enough, you’re in tune enough to the changing needs with growth to stay ahead of it with skill.

SBJ: Is there such a thing as growing too fast? Where is the tipping point?
Melugin: Employee morale can suffer if you’re growing too fast. And the satisfaction of the population that you serve could also suffer, lower satisfaction scores. We are constantly taking the temperature of all things in the orbit of our employees, making sure that we are having the kind of dialogue and feedback and relationship that we need with those employees to feel that we’re connecting with them. Depending on the client population, we are at minimum every few months engaging with the population and taking their pulse through satisfaction surveys.

SBJ: What is the best business advice you’ve ever received?
Melugin: Always be willing to make a decision, but don’t feel as though you’re married to the decision. So, don’t get paralysis by analysis. Keep making decisions. And if you make a bad one, don’t be too proud to change it.