Last March, James Muench and his wife, Helen, took over ownership of BrightStar Care, a business that provides home health care. Now, just over a year later, they are opening another branch in Grapevine and looking at a third in Southlake.
Muench’s company brings total health care to the home. They provide services such as at-home nursing, physical therapy, speech therapy and caregiving.
“The country’s demographic is aging and a lot of people want to stay in their homes as long as possible,” said Muench. “So we do pretty much anything to help somebody be more comfortable at home.”
Soon, they’ll be able to bring that quality care to Grapevine, where the newest branch will be.
Muench gave credit to the previous owners, Kevin and Teri Jones, for his ability to expand so quickly after acquiring the business.
“The previous owners really left us in a great place,” he said. “They built a really great foundation and we’re still very close with them.”
Muench got into the business after taking care of his grandmother, who took a fall during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I had a former corporate job, but I took care of my grandma for a couple of weeks and that made me realize I had a calling to do this type of health care,” he said.
That calling led to him reaching out to the Joneses to make his dream a reality.
He said it helps that he has also found a good group of people that want to work and provide a high quality of care.
“We’ve managed to find a lot of really amazing nurses that want jobs and want to take care of people,” he said. “And really, our job is to bring them together and understand the preferences of the clients. By doing those two things, we’ve grown our client base.”
Something Muench takes pride in is the process in which they bring in new clients. BrightStar Care has a full-time director of nursing, Carolyn Edwards, that has 40 years of nursing experience.
On the first visit with a client, Edwards will go on a complimentary visit to the client’s residence to do assessments and take vitals before we send our caregivers.
“Carolyn is an incredible nurse,” said Muench. “She goes out on that first visit and sometimes just does something super simple like watch Jeopardy with grandma or something while assessing.”
Muench enjoys the success, but he’s really in it for the community he serves.
“The reason we got into this industry was to help people,” he said. “We take it very seriously and it’s important to continue having a community.”
