The Capital Times - Helping hands: BrightStar offers in-home health care services

 

October 13, 2006

By Jeff Richgels

 

When JD Sun's grandmother fell ill with cancer in late 2001, he and his fiance struggled to find health care that would allow her to remain in her home.

"There were a lot of companies who could come and sit with her and make her a meal," said Shelly Sun. "But she was getting to the point where she couldn't bathe herself or get up on her own so she really needed hands-on care. And she was taking pain medication by injection so we needed a nurse to administer those. We had to hire three different agencies."

When JD's grandmother died the day before JD and Shelly were married in early 2002, it pushed them to form BrightStar Healthcare, a one-stop shop for the complete range of home health care services.

"Not to sound too hokey but it kind of felt like it was meant to be - it helped move us into the next stage of our lives," Shelly Sun said.

With Shelly a corporate executive and JD a successful day trader, the couple was well enough off financially to give their business idea their best shot, she said, and, "We really felt compelled to help families find what we had so much difficulty finding."

In addition to home care, BrightStar also will serve residents of nursing homes and assisted living facilities. And BrightStar doesn't serve just the elderly - it also offers high-tech pediatric and quadriplegic care.

A Dane County franchise office is aiming to begin serving clients by the end of the year.

The local franchisees, husband and wife Jeff Tews and Susan Rather, have a story eerily similar to the Suns'.

Tews, who has a corporate background in telecommunications and banking, and Rather, a medical technologist who most recently managed the lab at the Veterans Hospital in Madison, have struggled with home health care issues on both sides of their family: Tews' mother has early stage Alzheimer's disease, while Rather's grandmother needed home health care to stay in her home.

"We didn't have a place like BrightStar to turn to to find a trusted person," Tews said. "We went through a couple of people (for Rather's grandmother) that didn't work out too well and we ended up moving her to an assisted living facility."

When the Suns formed the company, it was a unique offering, but competition has since popped up, Sun said.

That's not surprising considering the demand for such services as the Baby Boomers age - about 500 people a minute turn 65 in the U.S., Sun said.

In Dane County, there are about 40,000 people 65 and older, "and it's certainly a growing market," Tews said.

BrightStar, which is based in the Chicago area, also provides temporary staffing for hospitals, nursing home and other medical facilities.

Employees appreciate that, Sun said, because it allows them to keep up their clinical skills, while enjoying the scheduling flexibility BrightStar provides them.

Finding enough quality employees is a challenge in the face of the much publicized U.S. nursing shortage, Sun admits. But, she adds, BrightStar's staff is only 30 percent registered nurses or therapists, and the company's flexible scheduling helps in recruiting.

"Hospitals and nursing homes are a little bit more constrained in their scheduling," Sun said. "And we try to recruit from younger grads who are happy to work nights and weekends because they get more money" for those hours. Tews said the situation in Madison is as tough as anywhere.

"Everybody is looking for staffing with our aging population," he said. "It helps that a lot of nurses no longer want to work shifts and face other schedule issues as full-time employees of hospitals. So there's increased interest in the agency kind of work we're going to offer."

BrightStar's home health care clients typically have long-term care insurance of some sort, although some do pay out of pocket.

"For long-term care insurance we have proprietary technology so we can handle the billing for them," Sun said. "That's usually a big hurdle for seniors and their children. Again, it's taking care of every aspect for our clients."

When they started BrightStar, the Suns wanted it to be a national company so families across the country could get their services.

They chose franchising, Sun said, "Because we thought it was very important to have a local owner. What an owner will do at 10 o'clock at night for a family I think generally is much different than what an employee (of a company-owned business) will do."

Considering the potentially life altering nature of health care, BrightStar has been particularly picky about selecting franchisees, Sun said.

"We've selected 15 and turned down five - people who had written a check and turned in a franchise agreement who just weren't the right fit for us," she said. "We would not want to have a franchise owner who would not take care of grandma the way we would have wanted her taken care of."

The franchise fee is $35,000, with an initial investment totaling $100,000 to $160,000.

BrightStar has seven sites open and is aiming to open 400 new franchise and 40 corporate locations by the end of 2010.

BrightStar has a franchise office open in the Milwaukee suburb of Glendale and its Appleton office is scheduled to be open by the end of the year. It plans to add six locations in Wisconsin over the next 18 months.

The Madison office at 3230 University Ave. is open and providing temporary staffing services, but starting client services is pending state licensing, a process Tews and Rather hope to have completed by December.

"We need a licensed RN on staff and we have an ad in the paper," Tews said.

The Madison area is a strong market for temp staffing for health care, because of the shortages in the industry, but there also is a lot of competition, Tews said.

Because it's a business based on trust, BrightStar does full background checks, including criminal records, and drug screens all potential employees. And all employees are bonded and insured.

"Susan and I are hands-on here and we're going to be very engaged," Tews added. "We think that referral business will come our way because of that."

E-mail: jrichgels@madison.com