After two years since becoming Nurse Next Door President in 2014, the company has named Cathy Thorpe as Chief Executive Officer. Taking over the strategic vision from John DeHart and Ken Sim, Cathy has guided Nurse Next Door through dramatic expansion from 85 franchise locations to 130, while growing the business 30 per cent year-over-year.

Read more here.

This story has been featured on:

Yahoo Finance

Franchising.com 

The Sacramento Bee

Daily News Los Angeles

There is another way. That’s to follow the lead of Vancouver’s Nurse Next Door—a successful franchisor specializing in in-home care. The company not only rejected a recent acquisition bid from a giant U.S. hospital conglomerate, it flipped the offer by selling the would-be buyer 26 new franchises instead. In so doing, a thriving Canadian company retains its ownership and sets itself up for even greater growth in new markets. It’s the kind of long-term thinking guys like Stephen used to enrich our economy 130-odd years ago, and that smart leaders would do well to emulate today.

Read more here.

Imagine a herring teaching a whale to swim in its school and you’ll have an idea of what Nurse Next Door (NND) just accomplished. The Vancouver-based in-home care franchisor announced February 8 that St. Joseph Health—the operator of 16 hospitals in southern California—has acquired 26 franchises, increasing Nurse Next Door’s stateside footprint by a third in one splash.

After trying and largely failing to set up its own “private duty” practice providing meals, baths, housekeeping and basic medical services to seniors and the disabled in their own homes, St. Joseph approached Nurse Next Door in 2014 intending to acquire all or part of the business. The Canadian company politely declined. “We’re a private company. We’re not for sale,” explained president Cathy Thorpe.

But instead of showing the US$6 billion-a-year non-profit the door, NND kept the conversation going, eventually steering St. Joseph towards a partnership on its terms. “They knew that Nurse Next Door had figured out private duty and they hadn’t. It became about the knowledge transfer and the ability to work together,” Thorpe says. “They acknowledged that they are not experts in this area, and they really just want to leverage the system that we’ve developed and grown since 2007.”

Read more here.

Vancouver’s Nurse Next Door has partnered with St. Joseph Health to provide home-care services to senior citizens in Southern California, the organizations announced this week.

The deal, which Nurse Next Doors said is the first time a private home-care company is partnering with a healthcare system to provide services of this kind, will give St. Joseph 26 franchises of the private home-care service. These locations are expected to work with thousands of seniors.

Nurse Next Door president Cathy Thorpe said this venture is the start of a strategic shift for the company as it works to start more work with large health systems in the U.S.

Read more here.

In what’s being described as an industry first, one of the nation’s largest not-for-profit health systems has turned to franchising in a big way to expand its home care services.

St. Joseph Health is acquiring 26 Southern California locations from Nurse Next Door, with an option to buy another 12, the companies announced Monday.

Read more here.

Bringing in outsiders to run the company you built from scratch is risky business.

But John DeHart and Ken Sim felt they had to try.

Read more here.

Nurse Next Door’s President, Cathy Thorpe, and Co-founders, John DeHart and Ken Sim.

Jeff and Nancy Huguet had a long history of helping other before they began looking into opening a franchise.Here’s why they chose Nurse Next Door as the vehicle for their entrepreneurial passions. Read more.

New Jersey Franchise Partner Jennifer Wells speaks to the Associated Press about how she prepared her small business for the incoming 2015 blizzard. Read more.