Heartwood Home Health & Hospice

If you are looking for a company you can count on to help care for your loved ones who may be struggling with a life-limiting illness, or other health issues, I endorse Heartwood Home Health & Hospice. Despite the many stringent regulations imposed by the Board of Health, Medicare and Medicaid, we were unable to find any business or customer problems. It is for that reason I am proud to declare Heartwood Home Health & Hospice Gephardt Approved.

And head administrator, Lee Vasic, says he has found patients and their families often do not know they have a choice when a loved one needs home health care, or end of life hospice care. He has found that discharge planners often times assign patients to facilities. Patients might not know they have many choices for care. He says there is always a choice.

Vasic says he founded his company based on his inspiration and passion for caring about people to make the most of their last months of life. He says he's passed that caring for the hospice benefit on to his staff. Vasic makes sure everyone involved in his staff works with individually with the patient for comfort and relief from pain. But there is more than just the patient involved. The Heartwood staff is also dedicated to the family, keeping them informed, calm, and comforted, in their collective time of need. Keeping people at home is the primary goal of Heartwood, where the focus is on care, not cure. It is this dedication that won them the Health Insights Quality Award for 2010.

"There's No Place Like Home"

Heartwood has 30 full and part-time nurses, social workers, physical therapists, nurses aids, occupational therapists, speech therapists, dieticians, housekeepers, and homemakers. Vasic says there just aren't many needs his team of professionals can't handle. Indeed, the goal is bringing the luxury of staying home to every patient, and leave behind all the distractions of a care center or hospital. He also feels it's important to keep his patient to staff ratio high, allowing interaction that forms a personal bond between staff members and patients. Vasic says his goal is not to be the biggest, simply the best.

So, between dedication to patient care, a strong commitment to keeping them in their homes, and an unblemished record as far as our investigation is concerned, you can see why I am proud to endorse Heartwood Home Health & Hospice as Gephardt Approved.

--Bill Gephardt