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Caregiving with Compassion
Vital Statistics
Company: Care Management Group LLC, 566 Whalley Avenue, New Haven (203-387-4002)
No. locations: 1
When founded: September 1998
Startup costs: $70,000
First-year revenues: $300,000
Principals: Alan Russo, Joanne Russo
No. employees: 35
Product/service: Private duty home care company
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Business New Haven
12/13/1999
By: Priscilla Searles
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The first step in founding Care Management Group was to start another company: the Care Training Center. Not only did it seem logical to founders Alan Russo and his wife Joanne, it also seemed necessary to help fill a growing shortage of qualified people to provide home health care.
"My wife is a nurse and nurse's aide instructor," explains Alan Russo. "She found a lot of prospective students were not being considered for employment by the companies she worked for. So we decided to open our own school.
"We founded the Care Training Center in April 1998 before opening Care Management Group, because we wanted to make sure we had a source of well-trained and motivated employees - that's the key to Care Management Group's success," Russo adds.
Because the Care Training Center is a private occupational school, it had to earn certification by state regulators. "We had some pretty strong ideas about where and what we wanted the school to be," Russo explains. It had to be located conveniently, easy to get to by car or bus. And we wanted to make sure tuition was affordable to almost anyone. Our Whalley Avenue location for both the school and Care Management is easy to get to."
The aging population was a major consideration in the founding of Care Management. "People want to stay at home as long as possible, to function independently in their home environment," explains Russo. "Many older Americans may not require the services of a care center or institutional facility to get services such as assistance with personal care, grooming, menu-preparation or home-maintenance.
"There aren't enough people in the business," he adds. "[There are] not as many nurses aides as needed; we have nursing shortages and home health aide shortages are getting worse as America ages."
Since the school's founding approximately 400 students have been enrolled. The graduation rate is about 80 percent.
"Few [students] drop out of the program once they are in it because we give them a detailed explanation as to what they are getting into," says Russo. "We've had about 330 graduates to date, and we've hired approximately ten percent to work for us. Most dropouts are because the student lacked of motivation - we'd rather refund their tuition than graduate someone who isn't appropriate. We run background checks on the students we hire, even motor-vehicle checks. We offer placement assistance for each graduate and even invite home care agencies to graduations."
The Care Training School keeps classes small, with 10 to 15 students per class. Students who attend class full-time can complete the course in three weeks. Evening students typically take eight weeks, and Saturday students can complete the 75 hours of instruction, lab and field/clinical work in about ten weeks.
Care Management Group provides services to New Haven County, lower Litchfield County, upper Fairfield County, and southwestern Middlesex County.
"We reject more cases that we take," Russo explains. "We're not going to take a case if we can't cover it properly or it requires more professional skills than we can provide. If we can't handle a case, we refer cases, working with home care agencies who can handle it
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