The
Arizona Republic
Scottsdale - Business Section Wednesday,
March 8, 2006
Firm provides assisted-living referrals
Name:Angela
Olea
Title: Chief executive officer, founder
and owner of Certified Assisted Living Locators, also
known as CALL RN.
What I do: CALL
RN, based in Scottsdale, is a certified assisted-living
locator, providing free referrals and placement assistance
to assisted-living homes and other facilities statewide.
About my business: When health issues
make living alone unsafe or difficult and staying
in one's home is no longer an option, CALL RN helps
select appropriate assisted living homes or assisted
living communities for families to consider. Our caring
staff takes into consideration health needs, preference
of living location and monthly income to recommend
facilities where the senior can enjoy loving care,
peace of mind, and a good quality of life. A registered
nurse oversees every senior referred to CALL RN. This
expert medical knowledge is what makes a proper placement
possible. All of the facilities we recommend are licensed
by Arizona and have been thoroughly evaluated by our
staff, both on-site and cross-referenced with the
Arizona Department of Health Services. CALL RN is
available statewide for emergency as well as regularly
scheduled placement assistance. We are the only agency
that can bring the facility to the senior who is unable
to personally tour with our DVD library of hundreds
of facilities to help with the decision making process.
Our continued follow-up with the senior facilitates
the transition.
Recent Accomplishments:
1,000th client as of Nov. 22.
What I have Learned in Business:
Strategic alliances grow your business, so be selective.
Goals: Franchise
CALL RN nationally within the next six months.
What community I live in: Norththeast
Mesa.
Where I grew up: Savannah, Ga.
Please contact us at news@scottsdalerepublic.com,
if you would like to have your business
profiled.
|
East Valley Tribune
Business Update Tuesday,
February 21, 2006
CALL RN gives clients info for patients needing more
care
By Ed Gately, Tribune http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/index.php?sty=59589
|
CALL RN founder Angela Olea spends
some time with 89-year-old Magdalen Bieling at the assisted
living home where she resides. Julio Jimenez Tribune
|
An assisted-living placement
service founded by two nurses has experienced rapid growth
and will begin nationally franchising later this year.
Scottsdale-based CALL RN (Certified Assisted Living Locators)
provides clients with information about group homes, or assisted-living
homes, as an alternative to hospitals and nursing homes. Angela
Olea, a registered nurse, is the cofounder and owner.
“I just saw a need in
the hospitals for discharge planning,” she said. “We
would see the same people come back every few months. Each
time they would get readmitted, they would be sicker and sicker.
We would send them home where they’re not getting proper
monitoring. They wouldn’t have proper nutrition, follow-up
and so on. So on their own, their medications would run out,
and they would get sick again and then get readmitted.”
Olea began researching to determine
what options were available for elderly patients and learned
of several nurses who were starting group homes or assisted
living homes. “Mostly they’re homes that are sprinkled
through every single neighborhood throughout Arizona,”
she said. “They just look like a regular house, but
they have grab bars in the bathroom, and the home is actually
licensed by the state, and they provide 24-hour care.”
The firm provides its service
free to seniors and their families, and has more than 500
contracts with smaller group homes and larger assisted-living
facilities. The company generates revenue from the fees paid
by the group homes and assisted living facilities per placement.
“I have a team of 10
people who work with me, and it ranges from a master’s
degree social worker to a geriatric nurse practitioner, and
a senior advocate,” Olea said. “There’s
also registered nurses.”
Typically, the company is contacted
by either a hospital discharge social worker or the relative
of an elderly loved one.
“They will call us and
say either my mom is in the hospital or my father’s
had a decline in health, what options are available,”
Olea said. “Once we find out what are their care needs,
what are their medical needs and what’s their finances,
we present them with options to help them, especially with
finances. We try to present them with at least three different
options.”
CALL RN has a video library
of all the group homes and facilities available, and can provide
virtual tours to clients. In addition to being licensed by
the state, all of the homes are evaluated by company staff.
“In Arizona, we’re
up to probably 1,900 group homes — residential care
homes — so I think that people want an alternative to
the nursing home setting,” Olea said.
“They want to be in a
homelike situation. We’re seeing a trend toward what
is the noninstitutional.”
For example, one of the group
homes CALL RN works with is Emerald Groves, a home in Mesa
that includes a large garden and farm animals. “In Mesa,
you can have up to 10 residents living in a home, and then
in Chandler you can only have five people living in a home,”
Olea said.
“If you drove into a
neighborhood, you would not be able to tell that assisted-living
home from your neighbor’s home.”
Olea’s firm is growing,
and it placed its 1,000th client late last year. It is now
working with James Ullman, an attorney with Greenberg Traurig,
LLP, on its franchising plan.
Franchisees, or those
given permission to market the company’s goods or services
in a local area, would train at the company’s headquarters
in Scottsdale and then replicate the company’s operations
in their home state, Olea said.
Contact Ed Gately by email, or phone (480) 898-6814
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