Family Private Care welcomes CareFirst Home Care, located in Tampa, FL, as our newest “sister” company. Founded in 2004, CareFirst is a nurse registry specializing in personalized services and specialized caregivers, providing excellent referral services to clients in need of in-home care.
Stephanie Wiley
Blair Orsatti
Alice Gilbert
Orientation at Family Private Care energizes the atmosphere! It includes many faces… and many facets… Employees share facts with attendees about what it takes to be the caregiver clients want most. Contracts are carefully explained. The finance area shares how the reimbursement process works, and handbooks are distributed. As the last step in the registration process for caregivers, FPC endeavors to ensure that registrants receive a first-rate interactive information session.
On February 9th, George Sack, M.D., Ph.D., Associate Professor of Medicine and Biochemistry, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Medical Director, Johns Hopkins, USA presented a lecture on “The Future of Personalized Medicine” as part of the 2011-2012 Distinguished Lecture Series. Dr. Sack spoke about how the care of our health is becoming increasingly related to the basic sciences of human biology. Simple clinical categories (e.g. “hypertension,” “diabetes”) are being dissected into subgroups that respond differently to different treatments. Improved (but still far from perfect) understanding of our own physiology and its variation(s) is beginning to offer more effective treatment, improved survival, earlier diagnosis, and prognostic tests. Unfortunately, these developments also share notoriety with increasing complexity, higher expense and confusion.
By: Ellen Peitz
Dr. Cheryl Jordan, Dr. George Sack and Ellen Peitz
I am going to write from my heart today on an issue that is very near and dear to me and that is the security of our senior population. As we all know the economy has taken a severe hit in the last couple of years and this has taken a real toll on all of us. One of the side effects is individuals who have lost jobs and are looking for a way to replace lost income. Seniors have become easy prey. Family Private Care has been involved in home care since 1997. We have seen more and more individuals opting out of using a reputable company for hiring a home care worker in order to save money. They instead go directly to the worker and hire them privately.
This is a very dangerous thing to do for several reasons. One of the most important is the background of the individual. We have frequently gone through the registration of an individual who appears as angelic as the angel Gabriel – only to run their criminal background check to find they have a history of criminal activity. We have begun the process on many individuals who we know were hired privately prior to registering with Family Private Care, and who were not able to meet state-mandated standards; so were unable to register with Family Private Care.
For the most part privately hired caregivers are uncertified, unlicensed, and untrained individuals. Let me share with you the required process caregivers must go through who register with Family Private Care.
All caregivers who walk through Family Private Care doors first of all take a test. The test determines their understanding of home care, the knowledge of their skill level, and grasp of the English language. They must pass this test with a 70% or higher in order to proceed with registration.
They then meet one-on-one with a trained staff member who discusses their home care experience, gets to know their personality, and whether or not they will be a good fit for Family Private Care and vice versa. If all are in agreement, the caregiver then begins the actual registration process. Here are the items Family Private Care requires for caregivers to register:
In addition to this registration process the caregiver attends an orientation class at Family Private Care to review client-focused issues. By the end of the orientation Family Private Care knows whether or not we want to represent this caregiver. Only after the orientation is completed and the registration file is final is the caregiver referred to a client from Family Private Care. At this point it depends on the clients’ feedback on whether or not caregivers continue to receive referrals from Family Private Care.
You only have to pick up the latest newspaper, or listen to the stories on the 5 O’clock News to hear the horror stories of unlicensed, non-screened caregivers to know bad things can happen. Please, make sure you are putting enough precautions in place to give your loved one and you the peace of mind you deserve. Let me urge you to use licensed private care companies who have sterling reputations in your area to meet your home care needs and keep you safe, secure and well cared for in the comfort of your own home.
Deborah Irvine, President, Family Private Care