Americans seeking nursing care in the Northwest may be about to get some relief. The highly successful Canadian Nurse Next Door home health care business is expanding into the US, coming to Washington state sometime in the next 12 months.

Nurse Next Door has been spreading across Canada like wildfire. It started in 2001, and has built itself up. Just a little more than two years ago, NND had three locations; it now has 27. One of the founders is quoted as saying they could have had 150, but they wanted the right partners. That statement refers to the fact that aspiring NND partners have to prove the capacity to cope with upfront costs of $125,000 in the first year, put up $35,000 in advance, and make a five-year commitment to royalties of five percent on gross income.

Nurse Next Door is an interesting concept. It’s a targeted home care service, working, if you can stand the cultural shock, on client budgets, not operator budgets. The clients pay what they can afford, not the usual lucky dip on fees.

That’s more than slightly interesting, because it also seems to fit NND’s business model, which is apparently based on “what works” and not an off the rack business model like all the others that can fall to bits in the real market. One of the really intriguing things about NND is that it has the business structure of many highly successful businesses: A small administration based on much larger operational organization. That means NND has comparatively low non-operational costs.

That business model would mean a lot to people in the US home health care industry. It could also mean a lot to US nurses who are more than slightly tired of the on again-off again cycle of accountancy in the industry, which means they have to play “spot the viable home care provider” as a career option.

Most impressive is the fact that Nurse Next Door is a 24/7 operation. In Toronto, NND got a lot of attention when it started up, and it seems that one of the reasons it’s so popular is the low rates: $21 to $28 an hour for anything from companion care to complex care. As you can see, this improves the affordability equation considerably for families looking for a minder of their loved ones.

America’s long suffering aging population could benefit a lot from a nursing service that recognizes the realities of costs to clients, and a good business model for those providing the services. It could be a real shot in the arm for the US industry, where the costs for businesses and clients seem to have been worked out in the early Jurassic times.

Looks like Nurse Next Door is open for business for anyone who meets their criteria. US nurses might want to give NND a thorough examination.