Opening a Home Care Agency with Elais Ponton: Ep 18

Welcome to another episode of Mastering Nursing! This week, we’re talking about what it’s like to launch a home health agency as a nurse entrepreneur and business owner. Joining Nurse Keith to share her experience is Elais Ponton.

Elais Ponton holds a BA in Psychology and Anthropology from the University of British Columbia and a BS in Nursing from the British Columbia Institute of Technology, where she specialized in home health care and wound care. She has worked as a Registered Nurse in high acuity hospital settings, hospice, as well with home care populations focusing on mental and public health. As Chief Nursing Officer, Elais is co-owner and co-founder of Nurses With Heart Home Care, providing medical and non-medical care to individuals living in their homes in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

What You’ll Discover in This Episode:

  • Some of the pitfalls and joys of opening your own home health agency.
  • Strategies for self-care and living a balanced life as a business owner and nurse.
  • That opening a business with family members has its challenges but that can all be overcome with conscientious attention.
  • That a private self-pay model of home health can work in certain communities and going through the entire Medicare certification process may not be necessary. .
  • Plus so much more!

Featured on the Show:

Nurses With Heart Home Care At a Glance

“Nurses With Heart Home Care pro­vides med­ical and home assis­tance ser­vices to all indi­vid­u­als, cov­er­ing infant care to end-of-life man­age­ment for Santa Fe County.

Nurses With Heart deliv­ers “Heal­ing Hearts and Help­ing Hands” through our qual­i­fied and com­pas­sion­ate staff. A com­pre­hen­sive range of ser­vices is deliv­ered by licensed, bonded and insured Reg­is­tered Nurses (RNs), Licensed Prac­ti­cal Nurses (LPNs), and Cer­ti­fied Nurs­ing Assis­tants (CNAs). Our staff focuses on empow­er­ing you by facil­i­tat­ing tran­si­tions from hos­pi­tal to home, eval­u­at­ing the effec­tive­ness of your health man­age­ment, teach­ing you and your care­givers how to effec­tively man­age your own health, and coor­di­nat­ing ser­vices through liaisons with hos­pi­tals, clin­ics, physi­cians, and your other health pro­fes­sion­als. This con­tin­uum of care is how Nurses With Heart works to pro­vide you the right ser­vices, in the right envi­ron­ment, at the right time.

Nurses With Heart Home Care assists peo­ple who are recov­er­ing from an ill­ness or acci­dent, who are dis­abled, or those who are chron­i­cally or ter­mi­nally ill and are in need of nurs­ing, social or ther­a­peu­tic treat­ment, or who sim­ply need assis­tance with the essen­tial activ­i­ties of daily liv­ing. Nurses With Heart can receive and ful­fill your physician’s pre­scrip­tion for all of your nurs­ing and home health needs.

Santa Fe, New Mex­ico has a pop­u­la­tion of over 144,000 and an ever-increasing size of rural com­mu­ni­ties. Nurses With Heart serves the diverse Santa Fe com­mu­nity by pro­mot­ing qual­ity of life through allow­ing you to remain in your home and still enjoy all New Mex­ico has to offer. A safe and com­fort­able home envi­ron­ment facil­i­tates heal­ing and main­tains well­ness.

Nurses With Heart Home Care sup­ports all who wish to remain inde­pen­dent and in their own homes through nurs­ing and home health ser­vices, wher­ever home may be.”

Nursing Organization of the Week: Transcultural Nursing Society

Nursing isn’t just about providing care, it’s also about the community. Nurses who work together help drive the field forward and provide support, encouragement, and so much more for nurses all over the world. With that in mind, we here at the Mastering Nursing podcast want to highlight and recognize those that are doing a particularly great job of it.

We seek nominations from our listeners and other passionate nurses, and then decide on award winners each episode. If you have any nursing organization you think should be highlighted, don’t hesitate to reach out via e-mail (or social media message) and let us know!

This week, we’re so happy to award the Transcultural Nursing Society or TCNS.

The TCNS seeks to provide nurses and other health care professionals with the knowledge base necessary to ensure cultural competence in practice, education, research, and administration.

Transculture Nursing is a theory based humanistic discipline, designed to serve individuals, organizations, communities, and societies. Human care/caring is defined within the context of culture. Culturally competent care can only occur when culture care values are known and serve as the foundation for meaningful care. Scholarship is the foundation of the discipline of TCN. Advanced educational preparation in TCN enhances the practice of culturally competent care. Certification documents evidence of the ability to provide culturally competent care.

Needless to say, it’s important work, And if you’d like to learn more you can connect with them online on Facebook.

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  • September 20, 2018
  • Podcast