For Owners and Caregivers, Home Care Makes a Big Impact on Seniors

DENVER, CO- Rita Scott is just settling in for the night when the phone rings.

Though her work day as owner of Preferred Care at Home of Metro Denver is over, she is always on call. Rita knows that people depend on her during family emergencies, and those emergencies can come at any hour.

As she picks up the phone, Rita glances towards a clock on the kitchen wall— it’s 9:30 p.m.

A senior has fallen. The family needs a caregiver at their home by 8:00 a.m. to make sure it doesn’t happen again, and Rita is ready to step in. For her, like everyone in the Preferred Care at Home family, home care is personal—and work is never left at the office.

“My mother is 73. She still mows the yard and she still works. She’s one of those people who’s afraid to sit down because she’s afraid to lose her independence,” says Scott, who opened Preferred Care at Home of Metro Denver in the Fall of 2010 after seeing first hand a need for in-home care in her community.

A quick check of the evening news takes Rita’s thoughts several miles south to a client in the Colorado countryside. In what seems like an annual occurrence now, wildfires are threatening homes in the area while sending plumes of smoke swirling through the cool mountain air.

One of Rita’s live-in senior clients—an elderly woman in her 90s—stays on a remote ranch near that smoke. The woman’s nearest relative resides a 15 hour drive away in California, but she says Preferred Care at Home’s caregivers have become “her girls.” The duo of caregivers stay with her on the ranch, they buy her groceries, they pick up her medication, they even work alongside skilled nurses whose time at the ranch is limited.

And when the client needs to temporarily evade the wildfire’s smoke in an assisted living facility, “her girls” are right there by her side.

“The Doctor has said, if we have these same two caregivers working with her, she’ll probably live another four to five years,” recounts Scott.

For Rita, making an impact like that is what it’s all about. It’s the reason she got started in home care; and it’s the reason Preferred Care at Home’s owners all over the nation continue to answer their phones at 9:30 p.m.

It’s the reason why, less than 12 hours after the phone rang in Rita’s kitchen, a Preferred Care at Home caregiver arrived to give that family peace of mind—and it’s the reason why Rita got another call the next day, it was the family saying they are so thankful for Rita and the care she provides.