Dynamic Dozen No. 5: Integrity Home Care

For Integrity Home Care, success is the outgrowth of a culture based on Christian values and respect for employees.

Founded in February of 2000 with a staff of seven, Integrity Home Care has grown to include approximately 450 employees in southwest Missouri and 400 employees in the Kansas City area. Integrity focuses on four areas of patient care pediatrics, state Medicaid, Medicare and private pay.

Led by its three owners Phil Melugin, chief operating officer; Paul Reinert, chief financial officer; and Greg Horton, chief service officer the company practices a core philosophy that the trio believes is responsible for its rapid growth.

"Those (Christian) principles weave themselves through our mission, through our policies, through the way we treat our employees, the way we ask our employees to treat others. I think that has been an important part of our heritage and one that we don't take lightly, but it also establishes a pretty high standard that we have to live up to as well," Hortonsaid.

While other companies claim a similar mantra, Melugin said Integrity lives its principles by taking a firm stance against requiring employees to sign noncompete agreements.

"At any time, our employees can come and care for 10 extremely valuable clients and they are free to take those clients to another agency or start their own agency if they choose to," he said.

In an industry challenged by a shortage of nurses and other health care professionals, many managers might fear such an attitude would result in a mass exodus of employees. However, the result has been the opposite.

"Our turnover for the past four years has been almost negligible," Horton said. "These people are so committed and dedicated to what we're doing."

And what Integrity Home Health is doing is conducting approximately 37,800 patient visits each month, providing medical social work and physical, occupational and speech therapies. Clients are provided with housekeeping, personal care and nursing care. Ninety percent of Integrity clients are elderly or disabled.

While Melugin and Horton declined to disclose overall company revenues, they did share details on the company's private pay side.

"We were doing approximately $5,000 a month in February of 2001, and as of February 2004, we were averaging $125,000 to $130,000 a month," Melugin said, adding that they now care for more than 112 Medicare patients compared to about 20 this time last year.

The attitude at Integrity Home Care creates what Melugin calls "intrinsic motion."

"(Employees) know that they are valued. They know that they're not taken for granted and it's hard to describe the power in an employee realizing the employer has a mindset that we have to work hard every day to keep them motivated and keep them engaged rather than having them legally entrapped," Melugin said.

Melugin and Horton agreed that the best way to keep quality employees is to treat them as they deserve to be treated and to honor the commitment the owners have made to their employees.

"If they're willing to sign on and help us build this company with their loyalty, with their commitment, with their ownership mentality, we will not sell this company out from underneath them," Melugin said. Their desire is for Integrity Home Care to one day be an employee-owned company and, Melugin said, to prevent outside companies from jeopardizing the company's values.

One such value is to avoid establishing a corporate hierarchy.

"We have kept the organization just as flat as I've ever seen one. All of our front line people are very empowered in the jobs that they have responsibility over communicating with clients, communicating with caregivers. Everyone here is focused on our mission and that's caring for other people," Horton said. "We don't have a lot of people watching people in this organization. We're committed to never having to do that."

Of the owners' dedication to continued growth, Horton said, "I don't know if that means we'll become the largest or not, but we never confuse size with quality. We just want to continue to be the best, and growth will just happen as an indirect outcome."