Vicki Karlovich knows what it takes to succeed.
A serial entrepreneur, Karlovich has established four businesses focused on health care services in the course of the last 20 years.
Her first business, Dignity Nursing Services, was launched in 1989 to provide private duty nurses. Karlovich developed and implemented all the clinical, financial and business policies and processes for the company.
In 1994, she converted the business to a franchise - Staff Builders/Tender Loving Care, which was accredited by the Joint Commission on Healthcare Organizations, and added home health services.
In 2002, Karlovich converted the agency into Sacred Rose Healthcare because Tender Loving Care no longer wanted franchises, and Sacred Rose continues to operate with offices in Springfield and Joplin.
In 1991, Karlovich started her second firm, Spanish Rose Home, an exclusive, eight-bed residential facility that offered a private home environment with 24-hour oversight. She sold the business in 1995, and it continued to operate until 1998.
Karlovich's third business, Care Systems of SW Missouri, established in 1997, provides Care Link personal emergency response systems and Care Med medication dispensing machines in several counties in southwest Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma.
In 2003, she launched Karlovich & Associates, a geriatric-care management practice.
"By working in multiple fields of elder care services, I believe my role specifically as a professional geriatric-care manager is growing to be one of the most important roles in the health delivery system," she says.
Karlovich is proudest of the example she has set: "Anyone can achieve if they believe and work hard."
Karlovich got her start in health care through the Job Training Partnership Act, which allowed her to train as a practical nurse. She continued her professional growth, pursuing certifications in intravenous therapy, geriatric care management and victim advocacy, and earning her license as a nursing home administrator.
As an employer, Karlovich is willing to go the extra mile to help others find a career in health care. She says she often encountered women re-entering the work force after years as homemakers. What she learned from them was that other employers weren't willing to give them a chance to join the work force.
"Many agencies refused to put in the effort. That has not been my work philosophy," Karlovich says, noting that, with training, many of those women went on to successful health care careers.
"I feel my influence on others is by example," she says, "No matter how impossible something seems, you can deal with it."
In addition to her business interests, Karlovich is Springfield Unit Chair of the Missouri League of Nursing; board president of the Seniors and Law Enforcement Together Council; board secretary of the Southwest Missouri Chapter of the Alzheimer's Association; board member of not-for-profit Safe At Home Inc.; and a member of the National Association for Professional Geriatric Care Managers.[[In-content Ad]]
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