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(inspiring music) (uplifting orchestral music) - Welcome to "Business Forward."

I'm your host, Matt George.

Joining me tonight, two good friends of mine, Alison Hammerton and Lesley Vonachen, owners of Interim Healthcare.

Welcome, Lesley.

- [Lesley] Thank you.

- Welcome Alison.

- [Alison] Thank you.

- Well, I always like to start off with both of you, and I've known you both for a long time and your families.

Let's start off with you, Alison.

Are you from around central Illinois, or?

- I am.

- You are?

- Yes, I was born here and went to Richwoods High School.

- [Matt] Okay.

- And then went away for a little while, college and a couple other things, but came back.

I just love Peoria and excited to be in business with Lesley and so, yep, kind of really invested in the community here.

- Yeah, I mean, you and your husband are both invested in the community, just like Lesley and Matt, and I think that's one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on, not only because of your business, but really of what you do and your moral values of what you, how you think in this community.

It's just great stuff.

So welcome.

- Thank you very much.

- Lesley, how are you doing?

- [Lesley] Good.

How are you?

- Good.

So did you grow up from around here too?

- I did.

- You did?

- Born and raised.

Yep, my mom was born and raised and out of the six of us, I think five of us are still here.

Moved away for a while and came back to raise my family.

Love this community, like, you know, Alison just said, I wanna support it, make a better place to live for everybody, especially our children.

- Yeah, and the Vonachen name is just, you know, famous across the board when you're talking about everybody from Pete Vonachen to Dan to Rocky, to your husband Matt, who is Vonachen Supply and his dad, and just great, great people.

So, well, thank you for coming on.

Let's talk about Interim Healthcare.

What is Interim Healthcare?

- Well, Interim Healthcare actually is the oldest home care company in the country.

We've been around for about 60 years or so.

And the main office, sort of the headquarters, is in Florida, but there are about 60 or so locations, I'm sorry, 300 locations throughout the country.

And we provide home services, which are kind of an umbrella term, is activities of daily living.

So we'll go into people's homes and maybe do bathing and showering, transportation, meal preparation, companionship is a big one.

A lot of people that are older, if they don't have families here, they can get lonely.

And so that companionship piece is really important.

So we do a lot of those kinds of things.

And then we also do a little bit of home nursing, which is more skilled care, which typically we'll do like medication management for people.

- Yeah, okay.

So Lesley, in this business, I'm guessing it's highly regulated.

- [Lesley] Mm-hmm.

- So being part of Children's Home in the past, there's so many state regulations, probably federal regulations.

Do you have to be licensed?

- Yes.

- To do what you do, I'm guessing.

- Yes, yes.

We have two license.

We have a home care license as well as a nursing license, and we get visited by the state on a yearly basis to make sure our T's are crossed and our I's are dotted.

But yeah, so we are pretty strict about following those regulations.

- Well, it's important because in your business, I'm guessing, very similar to how what I said Children's Home is, safety's number one, right?

- [Lesley] Absolutely.

- Safety's number one.

And so those are the types of audits, some audits are annoying, I'm gonna call it an audit, but when the state comes in, those are actually good.

- Yeah, absolutely.

And it's security for the families to know that, you know, someone is watching over us and we are legitimate and we are following the rules and we explain that to them as well, that we're, you know, we're just as concerned about their loved one's safety as they are.

- So Alison, take me through a situation where someone would need, let's just, let's go with nursing services, okay?

- Okay.

- So, because when, when I was looking, you know, people know the term hospice, you know, and, but is this, this isn't that, right?

Or is it?

- No.

It is not.

A lot of times we'll work alongside hospice to kind of support their services.

And hospice isn't necessarily end of life care, but it's often end of life care.

Also, it's support care for people who need maybe some equipment or just some things to be able to stay home and to get through an ailment or, you know, get through that end of life period of time.

But what we do is support that in those situations.

So we'll come in and we'll do, again, those activities of daily living.

I'll use that umbrella term quite a bit.

But we'll take care of people in those ways.

So yeah, there is kind of a difference there.

- You know, I was... Oh, I didn't mean to interrupt you, go ahead.

- No, that's okay.

I think you asked specifically about nursing services.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- Typically what we do with our nursing license is we'll do medication management.

So for example, you may have somebody who is maybe struggling with memory issues, for example.

- [Matt] Oh, okay.

- And maybe can't remember when to take certain pills or can't remember, you know, what their medication sort of schedule should look like.

And so we will come in and fill boxes for them and make sure that their schedule is appropriate for them and communicate with their doctors as well and just really manage that whole thing for them.

- So, when I'm thinking of this, 'cause I have a lot of questions about, I wanna come back to the hospice piece, because I think that's the collaboration of care piece that you hear about all the time.

And I think it's important and vital more than ever now.

And you talk about the management of meds.

That's a very, very important piece, obviously.

- It's a big deal, yeah.

- And I just have always struggled with that piece, thinking about what's the best way to do it or what's the best process, because nonprofits deal with med management.

- [Alison] Sure.

- You know, and so do, and not just healthcare.

And so it's just so many different things that are involved with it.

So it's interesting you say that.

So, Lesley, let me tell you a little story here.

So I was on these cancer committees locally here about 10 years ago.

And I was asked to speak in Chicago and I was speaking about a grant and one of the things that was brought up, we started talking about hospice.

And one of the oncologists at Northwestern stated to me, they hated that word.

They didn't like the word hospice because people think that word automatically means end of life.

But Alison just said it doesn't mean end of life and I knew that, but most people don't know that.

So really your business, it's really key to come in and kind of be that side by side support, sometimes lead support, sometimes from the rear, right?

- Correct.

And lots of times it's almost an interim, you know, type of service where if someone's post-surgery or has, you know, been in the hospital for quite some time and they're transitioning back home or, and they've made the decision to, you know, stay at home and not go back into a living facility.

So we'll come in and work one-on-one with, sometimes, a nursing group and we, in tandem, take turns on the care schedule, you know, whether that be the hospice team and then we'll piggyback with them and then do all the things that, you know, they necessarily don't have to do or need to do.

We'll do the activities of daily living and the bathing and the feeding and that type of thing.

- So do you work in conjunction with hospitals or health groups or how do those referrals come about 'cause I think that would be- - Well we work with some social workers at the hospitals and some long-term care facilities.

They have the rehab portion of their services as well.

So they'll refer to us when a patient is transitioning home for some extra care or even in the independent living facilities just if the family wants to call us to make sure that their loved one's getting down to the cafeteria each day, to make sure that they're getting the meals and helping them get ready for bed or making sure they're getting up in the mornings and getting their medications taken on time.

- Yeah, I was thinking, and now OSF actually took it over years ago, but I was thinking of former IPMR and the rehab services.

So if, let's say, you have a patient that's in rehab services, that patient now wants to transition back to home.

And that could be, tell me if I'm right or wrong, that could be because they're ready to go back home or sometimes it's insurance or money related.

Is that true?

- Yes.

Sometimes their insurance isn't gonna cover.

- So they would go back home, they would have their rehab therapists and social workers tied to that.

Then Interim may come in, your company may come in, it could be the nursing group, it could be med management group, whatever it may be, and they would come in, coordinate with all of the other players, so to speak, and then put together a treatment plan, I don't know if that's the right term, but a treatment plan for that patient.

- So they all, we all kind of have our own treatment plan.

- [Matt] Okay.

- So the nurses will have their scheduled of things that they need to do with that patient.

And then we'll do mainly the daily things, but then the physical therapist will come in, the occupational therapist will come in, sometimes hospice will come in.

So we work kind of in between all of their visits and we're there sometimes when they're there as well.

- Yeah.

Well, knowing you two, I know you've thought about many things with this business, including marketing.

So knowing that this is a brand, a good brand throughout the United States, 300 plus facilities, how do you market what you're doing?

- Well, that's a good question.

So we've been very deliberate about taking that very slowly.

When we first opened, we've actually never known what it's like to not work during COVID because we started right when COVID was- - [Matt] I remember that.

(all chuckle) - So, I don't know if that's a blessing or not, but anyway, our approach has always been that we wanna grow slowly and we wanna do an excellent job.

And so we really haven't done a lot of advertising on the radio or the television.

We just recently took out an ad in Peoria magazines and that was really our first foray into, you know, formal marketing.

- I saw it.

- Yeah.

- It was funny.

I was reading through the magazine and I saw the ad and I went, "They're on my list to call anyway."

And so I ripped it out, put it to the side and that's why I contacted you.

- It's working.

- So it did work because it turned into now a 30 minute show on this.

- That's right.

Yeah.

Yeah, which we appreciate.

So yeah, so, we're starting to think more about that, you know, because we now feel like that quality.

- [Matt] I gotcha.

- You know, we've been able to get a feel for how we want to serve our clients and how we wanna serve our caregivers.

Our caregivers we sort of feel are our clients too.

We're close with them and we care a lot about them and their families.

And then I think our clients reap the benefits of that too, because they see that we care about them.

It's just, you know, kind of a holistic approach.

But anyway, so the marketing is- - It's slow but it's calculated.

- And a lot of word of mouth because we are both from here, you know, a lot of families that we know have reached out to us for care.

Which, you know, we feel very thankful for and that's a neat thing for us.

- This wasn't one of my original questions, but you brought up caregivers and I always think that caregivers sometimes are on the pay no mind list.

You know, they get thrown to the side and people really don't understand, until they're in a situation, they really don't understand how much stress and how hard it is on a caregiver.

And I like what you said that you actually take care of and think of the caregivers too.

- We feel like they are our family.

We do a lot of work on the front end.

When we hire those caregivers, we're looking for people that kind of, Lesley and my motto is, and really everybody in the office is, would you put this person with your family?

Would you have them work with your family?

And so the team that we've got together now are all people that we trust and we care about very much and we communicate with them a lot.

We care about their families.

And we just want them to thrive and just to see the passion they have for their clients and the work they do is really impressive.

I keep saying we're thankful.

We just are.

We love them.

- I mean, if you think about it, Lesley, they're the unsung heroes of this whole- - Oh, I mean, we wouldn't be doing what we're doing if we didn't have them.

And speaking from, you know, an experience we had with my family and my dad was out of town and we had to hire a service.

And that's kind of how, you know, we got, or I got into it when Hammertons asked us if we'd be interested and I said, "Oh my gosh."

I mean, we just came off of some really bad experiences with some agencies out of town and I can tell you what works and what doesn't work from the family perspective."

And that is really a big piece of it, is giving the family peace of mind.

So many of our clients, their family is out of town and so we are their go-to to know how the parents are doing.

- [Matt] That makes sense.

- Yeah, and so, it's just important.

And to Alison's point about how close we are with our caregivers and they're all experienced and it's a passion for them.

- Yeah.

My grandma passed away a couple years ago.

She was 105.

- [Lesley] Oh my gosh.

- And my dad, who is in his, was at the time, in his early 70's, was taking care of her every day and his brothers.

But they would go and you could see the wear and tear.

And, you know, that's their mom, right.

That's my grandma.

I always thought there has to be the most empathetic, sympathetic people involved with that piece of it because they were at, the place where my grandma was in Indianapolis, they were just the most loving people in the world.

And it made, they almost became part of the family because my grandma struggled at age 100 and lived five more years.

So this went on for five years.

And I just, I think knowing you two, that's the most important piece of this business is, I'm just gonna use the word love, that you have to love, 'cause if I'm out of town, and I have it down here, transportation, I wrote transportation down because if my grandma is in Indianapolis and no one's there, how's she getting to places?

And transportation, everyone seems to have a problem with.

Or a lot of people do.

- Right.

- [Matt] And you provide that too.

- Yep.

We help people get to their doctor's appointments or the grocery store or, you know, whatever they need.

Just actually to get out and take a ride.

(Matt groans) We had one caregiver that drove their client 30 miles at a time.

I mean, just to talk and get out of their home a little bit.

- Yeah.

Well, I mean, you almost become therapists in a way.

- [Lesley] Yeah.

- A caseworker's therapist because you just need somebody that actually cares.

It's pretty cool stuff.

So there's gotta be some fun stories to this that you've been building.

And I'm talking about just good feel good stories.

And I'm going back to marketing for a minute because, and I don't know if I'm giving you advice or just my thoughts or what, but you've got to have these stories that kind of build up.

That when you talk to your husband or whoever, you're just sitting there going, "You're not gonna believe what happened today."

- I have a story for you.

- [Matt] Oh, fire away.

- So actually this happened and we have others, but this is the most recent, and it was just right before Christmas.

So we decided over, you know, before Christmas, we always like to do something for our clients and for our caregivers too.

And so this year we took them, we all made cookies and we plated them up and we took them out to all of the clients' homes.

And so one of the clients I called and he lives by himself and I said, "Can I just pop in and see you today?"

And he said, "Sure, sure.

I'll be home.

I'll be home."

And so I went down and saw him and when I walked in the door, he said, "This just blessed my heart."

He said, "I was not having a good day and this is just the best thing that I've had."

- Aww.

- And I went, I said, "I don't care what else happened today.

I've had a great day."

- That's right, yeah.

- I mean, so those kinds of things, is just, that's why we do it.

It's such a blessing to be part of people's lives in that way.

- Yeah, I mean, being in the nonprofit business for a long time, I would tell people in my speeches that I would give over the years, I collect stories.

- Yeah.

- So when people ask me what I do, the older I got, I became a storyteller.

And I think that's the best part of selling your business, so to speak.

You're not intentionally doing it, I don't think, but it is what people wanna hear.

People wanna hear those feel good stories and how you actually care and love the people that you work with.

And so let's talk about team for a minute.

- Sure.

- Because you're talking about here are the core responsibilities of what we do within the business, but you've gotta have a pretty good frontline team to be able to go and execute.

I'm guessing those are the true heroes of what your business is.

- Yes, we have a lot of heroes (laughs) in the office and outside of the office.

So in our office we have a scheduler/recruiter and her name is Deanna.

She's fantastic.

- [Matt] That's awesome.

- And we have an office manager and her name is Tia and she comes with a lot of experience and she's just very professional and a wonderful addition.

She's the most recent addition to our team.

- [Matt] Nice.

- And then we have a lady named Jill, who's our HR manager, and she does some social media stuff like that.

So I guess, that's a little other marketing that we've been doing.

But, anyway, she's fantastic.

So those are the ladies in the office and then we have a team of about 30 to 35 caregivers right now that are serving the clients out in the field.

- [Matt] That's a lot.

- Yeah, yeah.

And some of them work pretty full-time, some of them, you know, we try to be really flexible with their schedule.

So if they're in school maybe, maybe nursing school or CNA school or, you know, whatever reason, they have family needs, little children, things like that.

We work around that.

So they, like I said, they work from anywhere from full-time to it's kind of part-time that can work with their schedules, so.

- I was just thinking, Lesley, you've got both nursing schools here, you've got ICC, Eureka, Bradley, you've got a nice pool of potential people that wanna get into this business.

And I talk about it all the time.

I think there's not enough people in, this is my opinion, but there's not enough younger people that are coming up and want to be nurses or want to be firemen or police officers or social workers or whatever.

And I think the more that you say, this is the impact that you can have and you can show it and tell those stories, I think your pipeline becomes deeper and your business can expand.

I mean, do you think that way or do you- - Oh yeah.

We've approached all of the nursing programs and Bradley and ICC.

- I figured.

- Yeah, and it just really depends on their schedules, you know, what they can and cannot do.

But, like, one of our popular shifts is a four to eight, anywhere from three to five days a week and that's a perfect time for a student.

- Yes.

- Yeah.

- To go in and help prepare a meal or, you know, play a board game and then help get the nighttime routine started.

- [Matt] Never thought of that.

- Yeah.

And weekends as well.

And for some of our caregivers who have children at home, they like the overnight shifts.

Their husband or partner or wife, whatever, would be there at night and that works for them.

So it's nice that we have lots of different options and we work with their schedules as well as the client's schedules and match 'em up according to their interests and personalities as well.

- I never even thought about like, so if, let's say we use, I'll go back to you, Alison.

Let's say you use that example of the gentleman that was living by himself.

Let's say he gets a hip replaced as an example and let's say he's 80.

A meal and meal prep is hard to do- - Really hard.

- When you're 52, let alone (Alison and Lesley laugh) when you're 80 and you're coming off rehab and surgery or whatever it may be.

So I never really thought of that.

Someone could come in and prep for five days and say, here, here's your Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and have it all ready and go.

- Yeah, we do a lot of that.

- Okay, that's cool.

- Yeah.

So yeah, we'll come in and prep meals and they can, you know, package them up and keep them in the refrigerator and it gets them through that time.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

And showers too, you know.

It's hard maybe if you had hip replacement or knee replacement or something like that, or a fall, a lot of our clients have are coming off of falls, just to be able to get them maneuvering through their house again.

- And then collaboration, you're open to collaboration.

So when you're looking at like the Central Illinois, is it Agency on Aging?

- Yeah.

We work with them.

- Yeah, and so you work with them and there's gotta be some other groups out there, but you're open to taking those calls from people and saying, "Hey, we need, we need help or referrals" and you're open to that, aren't you?

- We sure are.

I mean, we really feel like this isn't so much an industry in which it's a lot of competition.

I mean, we're all in it for the same reason.

We're here to help people and there's a lot of people that need help.

And so we just, we love collaborating.

We've collaborated with other home care agencies.

We work with nursing groups and hospice groups and we do respite care for the Agency on Aging.

They'll send us families that are in need of some respite care.

So all kinds of things.

- That's cool.

I always think about, I always talk about mentors on this show and but what's interesting about the dynamic with you two is you're probably mentors to each other.

I mean, you probably- - Absolutely.

- That's right.

- Yeah.

Maybe that's common, I don't know.

But if you think about it, you both have families that have been in business and you both can pick each other's brains and you both can sit there and actually put together maybe a strategy or for this upcoming year, whether it be marking or business or whatever it may be.

I was just thinking that, 'cause I was gonna ask you, do you have mentors or anything like that?

- [Alison] Yeah, she's sitting right there.

- She's just sitting right there.

I figured that one out, so.

- Yeah, Lesley, I mean, I don't have, probably the biggest thing that I've appreciated about you is just all the experience that you've had with your family, you know, and being a caregiver and working with outside caregivers and just the perspective that you bring.

- [Matt] It's meaningful.

- Oh yeah.

- It's meaningful.

- I mean, just because I haven't been through that yet.

I mean, I will someday but I haven't yet.

- Well, I appreciate you coming on.

I appreciate you coming on.

This was a quick 30 minutes.

So, Lesley Vonachen, Alison Hammerton, thank you for coming on the show.

Interim Healthcare.

I'm Matt George and this is another episode of "Business Forward."

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