Home care provider Nova Leap has made meaningful improvements in all major financial categories, except one. Driving organic revenue has been a persistent challenge for the company, but its leadership has laid out a plan to foster long-term improvement. 

Nova Leap is better positioned to pursue organic revenue growth now compared to recent years because of an improved labor market, CEO Chris Dobbin told Home Health Care News. The current operating environment will also allow Nova Leap to better support its local agencies while continuing to grow its footprint, two of Dobbin’s top priorities for the company.

“Because our business started getting hammered during COVID, we weren’t in a position to help those local agencies as much as we would have liked,” Dobbin said. “We spent a lot of time in 2021 and 2022 to right-size the business to the point where we were in excellent financial condition, which is why we’ve been able to go back to market and start making more acquisitions. … We’re ready to start deploying more money to the local agencies and give them the support that they probably should have had over the last couple of years.”

Nova Scotia, Canada-based Nova Leap provides assistance with activities of daily living, operating in 10 U.S. states and Nova Scotia.

In the past two to three years, Nova Leap’s organic revenue has been flat or slightly negative, Dobbin said. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, organic revenue was modest, but “not a level to brag about.”

During the pandemic, the company struggled to hire workers and provide resources to support its agencies. In 2024, Nova Leap brought in $25.8 million in annual revenue, a 1.6% decrease from 2023. Nova Leap has made some strides with organic revenue growth, but “remains a distance” from where its leadership wants to be, Dobbin wrote in a letter to shareholders in March. 

Now, the CEO plans to make significant investments in pursuit of increased organic revenue. The company’s plan to drive organic revenue is twofold.

Improving processes, inspired by fast food

First, Nova Leap aims to improve its processes, which can help create a platform for additional growth.

The company has streamlined processes and become a better operator in recent years, Dobbin said. The executive plans to continue to improve its processes, determining how it can increase efficiency across roles.

The CEO takes a McDonald’s-inspired approach to improving its processes.

“McDonald’s, years ago, had in Canada one specific franchise location, which was in northern New Brunswick, north of Maine,” Dobbin said. “They would do their test of new products, new food, whatever it was, new sauces, and they would use that market as a test case. If it was successful, they replicate that, roll it out across other [locations]. So this is a similar thing.”

Using this approach, Nova Leap will test new processes in a single agency or state, learn from successes and failures, and roll out any effective strategies across its other agencies.

One aid to process improvements is the company’s size. Operating multiple agencies allows the company to leverage a broader range of experiences and be more innovative, Dobbin said.

“Scale does have benefits, but the biggest benefit is just the access to more qualified people, experienced people that you may not have access to if you’re a single location,” Dobbin said. “We’ve benefited from hiring experienced people, people we never had access to when we were small, starting out.”

Continuing to grow will allow the company to access more experienced people, Dobbin said, aiding the company’s overall success.

Leveraging an improved labor market

As the second key to driving organic revenue, Nova Leap plans to expand its workforce across job descriptions.

Home-based care leaders continue to report staffing woes, driven by increasing demand. Workforce challenges have been tempered somewhat since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Dobbin and other HHCN sources.

“What have we been doing to hire more people or provide more resources to the local agencies?” Dobbin said. “We were struggling with that during the pandemic, but coming out of it, we’re now in a position to do it. I think we’re going to see the benefit of that over time. The combination of process improvement and hiring more people, I think that’s going to help us with the organic growth.”

Nova Leap plans to take advantage of the improved hiring environment and continue to onboard additional caregivers. The company is “always” working to hire more caregivers, Dobbin said. The company is also looking to increase numbers in other job descriptions.

In addition to hiring more caregivers, the company plans to hire more office personnel in pursuit of process improvement, Dobbin said. A more robust office staff will, in turn, help the company improve its processes. Nova Leap plans to implement a staggered hiring of additional office staff to complement existing office and regional growth plans, according to Dobbin’s letter to shareholders.

Scaling the business

Nova Leap has always been a growth company, Dobbin said, and 2025 will be no different. The company plans to execute several acquisitions in 2025, but is also recalibrating its strategy to have an increased focus on de novo growth.

The company “loves the concept” of de novo growth, Dobbin said.

“In the past, we’ve always been really focused on M&A,” he said. “That’s really what’s been driving the growth over the last eight years or so. We’re starting to turn a little bit more attention to de novo. What that balance will end up being, I don’t know yet. It’ll start slowly, and I think as we gain more experience in de novo, then, depending on our success there, that will help determine how active we become with those types of startups.”

Nova Leap has previously expanded through de novo in Nova Scotia, which Dobbin described as “very successful.” Starting something from scratch is appealing when it makes sense, Dobbin said.

Acquiring a company, meanwhile, allows Nova Leap to scoop up a more experienced team with processes, people and technology in place. With a startup, Nova Leap knows that the agency will not be immediately profitable.

“[For] every location, the time profitability takes you would be different, depending on the people and location,” Dobbin said. “There’s a bit of a balance between investing in something you know is gonna lose money for a period of time, versus an acquisition, which you would expect to be profitable from the day you acquired.”