A few minutes of read-only financials and a short questionnaire surfaces what a buyer would discount your agency for — first, which model you're priced on (Medicare-certified home health vs private-pay home care, which value very differently), then your caregiver-turnover story, your payor and referral concentration, and the working-capital gap between weekly payroll and slow reimbursement. Preview costs nothing.
Enter two numbers for an instant Home Health & Home Care ballpark. No signup — the real number comes from your books.
We answer each one from your books first — so you fix the story before a diligence team writes the number.
Caregiver and clinical-staff turnover is the operational lever and the first thing a buyer diligences. Industry median turnover has run roughly 75–80%. An agency that holds caregivers below ~50% is rare and pays for it in the multiple; one at the industry average gets discounted on the assumption that filling authorized hours is a constant scramble. Document your turnover, tenure, and fill rate on authorized hours — or the buyer models the worst.
Medicare and Medicaid rate cuts, claw-backs, and audits sit outside the owner's control. CMS rate changes can move margin overnight, and a heavy single payor (especially one Medicaid contract or program) concentrates that risk. Buyers discount reimbursement-dependent revenue versus faster-collecting private-pay, and they price in survey and audit exposure.
If a couple of hospitals, physician groups, or discharge planners drive most admissions, a buyer prices the risk that one relationship leaves with the owner or shifts to a competitor. Diversified, documented referral relationships that aren't personally the owner's are worth a premium.
If the owner holds the Administrator or Director-of-Nursing role, or the agency's license/Medicare certification is tied to the owner personally, the buyer underwrites whether the agency keeps operating — and keeps billing — through the transition. State licensure and Medicare change-of-ownership re-enrollment can gate the deal and create a billing gap.
Each lever is sized for a typical small agency, ~$1.5m revenue, ~10–15% owner-normalized ebitda (model split: certified vs private-pay) — about $200K EBITDA. Same number whether we frame it as “what a buyer discounts” or “what you keep by fixing it.”
The single highest-leverage operational lever. Lower turnover means filled authorized hours, stable census, lower recruiting cost, and a story buyers pay up for. Document the turnover rate, the tenure curve, and the fill rate on authorized hours so you can show retention, not assert it.
adds about 0.5–1.0× to your multiple · usually takes 12–24 months
Move toward a balanced mix with no single payor or referral source dominating, and grow private-pay revenue — it collects faster and isn't exposed to CMS rate risk, so buyers credit it directly.
adds about 0.5–1.0× to your multiple · usually takes 12–30 months
A real Administrator and, for a certified agency, a Director of Nursing who aren't the owner converts 'the business is you' into a transferable platform and unlocks the top of the multiple band.
adds about 0.3–0.6× to your multiple · usually takes 12–24 months
Show that revenue is long-tenured clients on renewing authorizations, not churn. This is the recurring-revenue proxy that distinguishes a durable book from a high-attrition one.
adds about 0.2–0.5× to your multiple · usually takes 6–18 months
Typical impact ranges blended from lower-middle-market transaction data, sub-$50M M&A databases, and observed consolidator pricing in the $300K–$3M EBITDA band. Directional, not a guarantee — your memo computes your actual numbers from your books.
The metrics buyers grade home care agencies on. The diagnostic fills the “your business” column from your actual QuickBooks data.
| Metric | Home Health & Home Care benchmark | Your business | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Recurring / contracted revenue | ~65% of revenue | Your data | Higher is better — the top multiple lever |
| Gross margin | ~35% | Your data | Pricing and job-costing discipline |
| EBITDA margin | ~12% | Your data | What flows to the bottom line |
| Healthy customer-concentration ceiling | top customer under 25% | Your data | Above it, buyers price the risk |
| Typical industry growth | ~10% / yr | Your data | Beating it can add to your multiple |
| Typical sale multiple | 4.0–8.0× EBITDA | Your data | Where the bidding starts; the levers above move you up |
Benchmarks are blended industry composites, service businesses $1M–$10M revenue, 2026-Q1 — directional, not a precise bar. Your memo measures you against your own books. Connect QuickBooks to fill in your numbers →
The diagnostic arrives as formats you can actually use, plus a private, scoped link to share a curated package with a specific buyer — you decide, card by card, what they see.
A branded slide deck, ready to present — for the buyer meeting, the lender, or the board.
A written diagnostic that holds up with buyers, yours to edit — plain-English summary, how we rebuilt your real earnings, every add-back listed.
Live formulas, not a dead printout — the path from raw profit to your real number, plus the cash-tied-up scenarios a buyer can stress-test.
Home-based care is a live, well-capitalized roll-up. SMB agencies are bought as add-ons by PE-backed platforms and tuck-ins by regional strategics. Verified buyers and backers: Addus HomeCare (public), BrightSpring (KKR), Aveanna (Bain Capital), The Pennant Group (public), Help at Home (Centerbridge + Vistria); franchise strategics include Home Instead (Honor Technology) and Senior Helpers. Roughly a third of deals are PE add-ons. The next-best bid for an SMB agency is usually a PE-backed platform or a private strategic — both of which pay for clean payor mix, low caregiver turnover, and management depth, and discount hard for the opposite. The memo maps which pool fits an agency your size and model.
Read-only, through Intuit. We never write to your books. About 5 minutes.
Just what the books can’t show — agreements, key accounts, who runs the crews.
Buyer-readiness score, normalized EBITDA, value range and top flags — instantly.
The full engine, all three deliverables, the dashboard and the buyer deal room.
Read-only, enforced in our code: every call we make to QuickBooks is a read. Nothing leaves unless you choose to share it.
Disconnect or delete anytime. Read our privacy policy →
Start with the free preview. Pay once — $499 — only when you want the full memo. No subscription, no per-seat pricing.
Most Home Health & Home Care businesses in the $1M–$10M revenue range trade at roughly 4.0× to 8.0× normalized EBITDA, with a typical deal near 5.5×. Smaller, owner-dependent shops sit at the low end; larger, manager-run businesses with recurring revenue reach the top. Your actual number depends on your books — that's what the diagnostic computes, blending recent lower-middle-market closings, main-street marketplace sales, and academic M&A survey data.
Yes, but how it's priced depends on the model. A small non-medical agency is valued on SDE (typically ~2.5–4x), and the biggest factor is whether the business survives your exit — if you're the Administrator/DON and hold the referral relationships, expect a discount until that's backfilled. A Medicare-certified agency of the same size usually prices higher because the certification itself transfers.
Medicare certification is a hard-won, transferable asset with a clinical-compliance and survey track record behind it — buyers pay roughly 1.5–2x more for it. Private-pay agencies trade that premium for simplicity and faster collections. Neither is better; they're two different value stories, and your memo prices yours on the right one.
Because filling authorized client hours is the binding constraint in this business, and industry turnover runs ~75–80%. An agency that holds caregivers stands out and gets paid for it; one at the average gets discounted on the assumption that census is a constant scramble. It's the first operational metric most buyers diligence.
Sixty seconds. Four numbers. No signup, no email. Just a real answer.