Franchise Update Magazine Issue II, 2013 | Page 18

Grow Market Lead

Anatomy of a Brand
By Jeff Bevis

Tackling
Healthcare Reform
I

FirstLight HomeCare acts to ensure
system health

f you follow the news, you’ve no
doubt heard a lot about the impending rules of the Affordable
Care Act (ACA), which became
law on March 23, 2010. At the extremes,
we’ve all heard the strong reactions
from some franchisees saying the added
costs from this act will put them out
of business, that they will cut pay, or
are unsure how to manage employees
to offset the onerous costs the legislation will impose. More commonly in
the home care industry, we hear about
franchisees concerned about head counts
rising above the 50-employee limit, or
worried they’ll be forced to cut back
on hours to keep employees at parttime status.
Make no mistake, though: the Affordable Care Act does carry a great
deal of significance for franchising, and
it will affect the cost of doing business
for franchisees across all concepts.
Our company, FirstLight HomeCare,
is a young, rapidly growing, non-medical
in-home care concept in a critical stage
of growth. We realized right away that,
if not handled properly, the ACA could
slow our momentum and create uncertainty for franchisees trying to manage
their operating costs.
Addressing the impact of this legislation head-on in a proactive and positive way has become a top priority for
FirstLight at the corporate level and
throughout the system. As such, we
are engaging in a variety of activities
to prepare our franchisees and help
them find innovative solutions to ease
the burden. Although we realize there

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Franchiseupdate Iss u e II, 2 0 1 3

continue to be legislative challenges to
the act’s long-term implementation, we
see the reality of current requirements
and do not subscribe to the “This is
going to put me out of business” philosophy that some in our industry are
latching onto.
Starting at the top

Like many other franchise companies,
we had our eyes on President Obama’s
healthcare legislation from the very
early stages. Perhaps unlike others,
we also started brainstorming ways we
could assist our franchisees in navigating through new requirements, should
they pass—and we immediately began an
ongoing series of efforts at the corporate
level to thoroughly educate ourselves
on the legislation, lessons we have been
filtering down to our franchise owners.

At the corporate level, we have immersed ourselves in every aspect of
educational sessions and offerings from
the IFA, including attending the Public Affairs Conference in Washington,
D.C., with one of our top franchisees
last fall to help maintain the “owner
perspective,” as well as attending more
sessions at the recent IFA Annual Convention. We have also enlisted healthcare
benefit expertise through the IFA and
from Ernst & Young to ensure we are
accounting for all aspects and potential
impacts of the new requirements in our
preliminary efforts.
We continue to spend a good amount
of time at our corporate offices in Cincinnati researching the legislation and
educating our franchisees. We honed in
on the tax credits available to franchisees under the ACA to better gauge the
employer net expense for implementation, and reached out to our owners to
help them understand what conditions
they would have to meet to be eligible.
As we amassed information, we started
holding a series of system-wide calls and
recorded webinars for our franchisees
to share the latest updates on the ACA
requirements, bringing in guest experts
to provide additional insights on some
of the more complicated issues, and
building a “formula template” to drop
employee counts, benefit costs, and
more into a simple grid to help bring
clarity to the implementation in 2014.
Getting franchisees moving

Jeff Bevis

Early on, we determined that encouraging our franchisees to get ACA-eligible