Press
Companies help families coordinate care for aging parents
12:24 PM CST on Tuesday, February 17, 2009 By BOB MOOS / The Dallas Morning News
Sharon Quick, a registered nurse, quit her job at a hospice company late last year to open Park Cities Healthcare Consultants, a business that lines up and coordinates care for the seriously or chronically ill.
Many of her clients are boomers juggling their jobs and child-rearing with caregiving.
After evaluating a patient's needs, Quick assembles a team of professionals to help the older person stay at home, if possible.
She says she's skirted the recession. Because she's relying mostly on word of mouth for marketing, she expected to wait at least a month for her first client. But Quick was up to a caseload of 20 after several weeks.
Networks
Since launching her business, Quick has relied on the network she has built from the hospital discharge planners, families and social workers she has met during her 14 years as a nurse. Most of her clients have come from them.
Once called in, Quick evaluates a patient's needs and lines up a team of caregivers. As a private nurse case manager, she also makes frequent home visits to check on patients and oversee aides.
She charges $500 for her initial assessment and plan of care and, if the client wants, $500 a month for ongoing supervision.
Ellen Stuart cares for her bedridden husband, John, and calls Quick their guardian angel. The University Park couple's children live out of state, so she turns to Quick in emergencies and for practical advice.
"She's taught me how to bathe and feed my husband and even change his bed linens while he's in bed," Stuart said. "But most of all, her cheerfulness helps me get through the day when things aren't going so well."
Low-cost launches
Caregiving enterprises and those that plan or coordinate care are well-suited for business start-ups during a recession, experts say, since they are service-based and require little capital to launch.
Quick didn't give herself a safety net before taking the plunge.
She quit her corporate job one week and began setting up her business the next. She withdrew enough from her 401(k) fund to support herself for three months.
"Aside from some legal bills for creating my business, my start-up costs have been nil. This business is me," she said. "It's a little frightening, but I'm passionate about the need for what I do. I feel like I'm sitting on top of a wave."
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