You wouldn't think that investing in a fleet of hybrid cars
would have anything to do with children. But at Pediatric Home
Service in Roseville, Minn., it has everything to do with them.
“Our vision-mission-goal is to take care of the medically
fragile child in [his or her] home using cutting-edge
technology,” says Susan Wingert, CEO of the company, one of
only a few home health care/HME providers in Minnesota offering
respiratory care and infusion therapy to children with special
medical needs.
Three years ago, Wingert began thinking about how the company
was delivering its oximeters, ventilators and other equipment. It
seemed rather ironic that PHS, so dedicated to helping children
breathe better, might be polluting the air with the vehicles it
used to transport respiratory equipment. So, the company got rid of
its gas hogs and invested in a fleet of what is now some 40 hybrid
cars and trucks.
“We want to provide a legacy of environmental stewardship.
We want to leave a legacy for our children of an earth that is as
clean as possible,” says Wingert. “You've got to walk
the talk. If we take care of kids, we have to do it in more
meaningful aspects than just the home environment.”
The story of the hybrid fleet is illustrative of just how
meticulous the provider is in its care of patients. At PHS, the
kids always come first.
Partnering for Pediatric Care
Although trained as a respiratory therapist, Wingert had never
worked in that end of home care. For years, she was involved in
sales for a national home health care company. But when her company
sold once, then twice, Wingert decided to start her own
business.
It was an unthinkable situation that propelled her into
pediatric home care. There were plenty of people caring for adults
needing respiratory care in their homes. It was time, she decided,
for someone to take care of the children. “We literally had
children who had been in the hospital from the day they were born
until they were 7 years old because there was no one to care for
them,” Wingert recalls.
She was emboldened by three doctors.
“We had three pulmonologists who really believed that
there wasn't anyone who couldn't be treated at home. They wanted
someone who paid attention. And I did.”
Wingert and five others — all but one a care practitioner
— were the staff when Pediatric Home Service opened in
January 1990. Working out of a 3,300-square-foot building, they
offered care for pediatric ventilator and respiratory patients in
their homes.
From the beginning, the company worked closely not only with the
patients and their families but with the rest of the care team.
“One of the things that we do really well is work to ensure
that we are partnering with our physicians, our hospitals and our
payers,” says Wingert. “We talk with them constantly.
We have standing appointments with our referral sources on a weekly
basis.”
Early on, PHS started a database to collect clinical
information. Now, if a physician calls and asks for, say,
information on how many patients have been on ventilators for a
year, PHS can accommodate them.
Such close partnerships have helped build the business. For
example, says Wingert, “physicians told us their weakest part
was managing the nutritional status of the patient.” So PHS
added a dietitian to monitor children's nutritional needs from the
time they are in the hospital continuing through their care at
home. “Now [the children] are nutritionally supported and are
able to grow,” Wingert explains.
It was payers' prompting that inspired PHS to add an infusion
component to its business in 1997. And when payers approached the
company to develop a program for working with high-risk asthmatic
children, PHS again rose to the occasion. It developed a
comprehensive, in-home asthma management program with service
provided by RRTs who have also been certified as asthma educators.
The program is designed, Wingert says, “to see if we can keep
[children] in school and out of the hospital and their parents at
work more often.”
PHS' staff (“the best staff in the U.S.,” Wingert
insists) has also played a major role in the company's growth.
“They bleed for these kids,” she says. When staff
members recognized that they were being asked to do a lot of what
Wingert calls “social service support,” they decided to
be intentional about it. Now employees have resources to help find
services for children and their families that otherwise might not
be available to them.
“We really like to deliver care from our heart,” she
says. “It's that care that makes people believe that they are
actually the most important thing in the world to us. A mom who
calls about a nebulizer — that is not what we would call a
high-tech piece of equipment. But to that mother, it is. She's
worried that it's not delivering medication fast enough or in the
correct amounts. But we make that mom think, in a 10-minute phone
conversation, that she is the only customer we have.”
Sticking to the Kids
That philosophy and the company's combination of services have
helped PHS grow to a 130-person staff — including nurses,
pharmacists, dieticians and respiratory care practitioners —
operating out of an 80,000-square-foot facility.
“We have only one branch, and we have no plans ever to
have more than one,” states Wingert.
She also has no plans to expand the company to include adult
home care. There is what PHS calls “a clear and distinct
difference between the adult technology-support patient and the
infant, child or adolescent patient.” Wingert doesn't want to
dilute the quality of care by expanding the company's reach.
“Because we specialize, because we have this very small
population of patients, we can delve deeply into quality of
care,” she reasons. “We make a significant investment
in quality on a day-to-day basis throughout our organization
— from the top down.
“We understand the complexities of dealing with these
patients. We can ask ‘What can we do better?’
‘How can we make our practice stronger?’ so that we can
be the [company] people look to, the one our referral sources can
depend on.”
Judy Giel, PHS' senior vice president, clinical service, says
that philosophy positions the provider well for the future.
“So many times there are unique situations [we have to
deal with], and it seems like there are insurmountable obstacles to
getting [a patient] home so [the child] can thrive in his own
environment. But Susan's approach isn't ‘I don't think we can
do it’ but ‘How can we do it?’ And that spills
over into the culture of this organization,” says Giel.
“We spend a lot of time on clinical education here,”
Wingert says, adding that the goal is to “turn those kids'
potential into the most it can be. We listen to what the needs are
and we say, ‘Let's do it.’”
But what about things like national competitive bidding? How
will PHS deal with that?
“We've had competitive bidding in Minnesota for over 20
years,” Wingert says with a laugh. “I'll tell you how
we deal with it — we don't. We have plenty of oxygen delivery
companies here that do it really efficiently and with low cost. Our
philosophy is that we take care of a much more involved patient. We
look at the efficiencies and ways we can support those families and
still be respectful of the health care dollar.”
Wingert makes it plain she has no plans to participate in
competitive bidding “because it would take away from our core
business.” And anything that takes PHS away from kids will
never fly, because at PHS, it's all about the kids.
Company Snapshot
Pediatric Home Service
16-year-old home care company dedicated to the
technology-dependent child, with emphasis on respiratory, chronic
disease (asthma education) and infusion services
One branch in Roseville, Minn.
130 employees
In its 13th year of accreditation by the Joint Commission on
Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.
Company Vision: “To make a difference in the life of every
family we serve by taking care of the child.”
