Home Halo Franchise Builds on Growing VA Home Care Opportunity

For Home Halo, the in-home care franchise built to help seniors stay safely in their own homes, serving veterans is not a new growth strategy. Veterans make up close to 80% of the company's clients, and its first client ever came through a Department of Veterans Affairs contract.

The company's first client received care through a Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) contract, and founder and CEO Dan Deak said veterans now account for close to 80% of the clients Home Halo serves. That experience could become increasingly valuable as the VA expands its support for care outside institutional settings.

The VA has also changed how much it can spend to support veterans who receive care at home. Under the Elizabeth Dole 21st Century Veterans Healthcare and Benefits Improvement Act of 2025, that limit increased from 65% to as much as 100% of the applicable nursing home rate for eligible veterans receiving noninstitutional care. The change took effect Sept. 11, 2025, and the VA later highlighted it in February 2026 as one way to help more veterans with complex care needs stay at home.

Va contract benefits

By contracting with the VA as a payer source, Home Halo can provide necessary care to veterans while giving franchise owners access to an additional payer source and an underserved segment of the home care market. But Deak said securing a VA contract is only part of the equation. Franchise owners also need to understand how the system works and build relationships with the people responsible for referrals.

“VA home care contracts are available to a lot of different providers,” Deak said. “There are a lot of providers that go out there and get a VA contract, but the contract itself is useless unless you know how to leverage that contract and how to get in touch with the right people at the VA so you can get on their referral lists. There are keys to having successful relationships with the VA medical centers.”

Home Halo has developed that knowledge through its own operations. Deak said the company has replicated its approach across eight offices, seven of which are company-owned, and can teach franchise owners how to establish relationships with VA medical centers, generate referrals and navigate the authorization process.

Franchise owner advantages

That experience gives Home Halo franchise owners another potential payer source in an industry that Deak said remains heavily dependent on private-pay clients. The difference is not simply who pays the bill. According to Deak, VA-funded care tends to begin earlier and can continue longer than private-pay care, which families often delay because they are paying out of pocket.

“The very first VA client we admitted, we still have on service four years later,” Deak said. “Private pay clients often have higher turnover. It's an additional referral source, but it's also a referral source that allows you to keep your clients for a longer period of time as long as you're taking good care of them.”

The federal shift could expand the number of veterans able to make that choice. By increasing how much the VA can spend on noninstitutional care, the policy gives eligible veterans greater flexibility to receive services at home rather than enter a nursing facility.

Greater access to funding does not necessarily mean every eligible veteran will use it. Deak said awareness remains a challenge, with some veterans and their families unaware that the VA may pay for home care services.

Home Halo addresses that gap through local outreach to veterans organizations, including American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars and AMVETS posts. For franchise owners, those community connections complement the relationships the company has built within VA medical centers.

For Deak, the opportunity goes beyond adding another source of business. It gives franchise owners a way to connect more veterans with home care benefits they may not realize are available and help them stay where they want to be: in their own homes.