Lynn home health firm bridges cultures

LYNN ? North Shore native Glenn Bacheller mastered several challenging corporate jobs, including president of Baskin Robbins and chief marketing officer at Dunkin’ Donuts, but as the years ticked by he began looking for one that would merge his business savvy with his passions. He found it in Lynn.Bacheller, 55, who grew up in Beverly and now lives in Santa Barbara, Calif., was convinced his future lay in helping others. As he put it during an interview in Lynn last week, “I wanted to do something that would connect my head with my heart.”The lofty goal emerged after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when Bacheller was working as chief executive officer for a Silicon Valley software company. He was riding in a cab toward the Empire State Building when the first of the Twin Towers collapsed about 30 blocks away. He went to a friend’s apartment, then drove to Boston and flew back home to California. Soon after, he decided to return to the East Coast with his wife, Amy, a former special education teacher, and their son and daughter who were then in their teens.”It made me realize that life and time are precious,” he said.In 2002, the couple settled in Newburyport, close enough to visit Bacheller’s mother in Beverly, the city where he had attended public high school and distinguished himself as all-time top scorer for the varsity basketball team. The Bachellers immersed themselves in community activities, he with the local council on aging and she at a Cape Ann Hospice organization.”I found that helping people made me feel good,” said Bacheller. “I had worked for years as a hired gun for the venture capital guys, but I felt the time had come to do my own thing. Until then, it had never dawned on me to buy a health care company.”Bacheller, a Bates College graduate with an MBA from Northeastern University, purchased Multi-Cultural Home Care (MCHC) in 2004. “I love the concept,” he said. “In so many cases the people are not well off and get better care if you speak the same language and understand their culture.”The company is based on that premise, so that a foreigner newly immigrated to Lynn is assigned a home health care aide and visiting nurse who speak the client’s native tongue, albeit Spanish, Russian, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Chinese or some other language.”The biggest complaint we get from people is that they don’t have the same provider every day. That’s why we strive for consistency, we try to have the same team coming in,” said Bachellor, emphasizing that many of his employees have been with the company for years.When Bachellor bought MCHC five years ago, there were approximately 160 employees, but the ranks have since swelled to just under 600, making it among Lynn’s largest businesses.Today, MCHC is headquartered in the Clock Tower Business Center at 330 Lynnway, but the company has offices in Peabody, Lawrence and Brighton. Freedom Home Care, a branch of the company started by Bacheller in 2006, is located in Peabody and caters to private-pay patients rather than those who depend on health insurance.When he isn’t working, Bacheller spends his time outdoors, climbing mountains and traveling the world.”I love to travel and see places I haven’t been to before,” he said, clearly animated by memories of trips to Europe, the Amazon, Asia and Africa. “As a kid, my family would camp in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. That’s how I was introduced to nature and the beauty of it.”Since then, Bacheller has climbed a slew of mountains, including Kilimanjaro, Elbrus, Ranier, Whitney and, earlier this year, to the base camp of Mt. Everest. He has been accompanied on many of these adventures by his son, Scott, 22, a senior at Roger Williams, and by his daughter, Becky, 25, who lives in San Francisco.A vegetarian and avid reader, Bacheller believes in the power of preventive medicine, choosing a more holistic approach to personal health. He also embraces the move toward eating what is grown or raised locally.”I try to take ca