Integrity Home Care opens two new offices

Springfield-based Integrity Home Care is expanding its services in Missouri and crossing state lines for the first time with the opening of offices in Osage Beach and Kansas City, Kan.

A growing need for home health care led to the expansion to Osage Beach, according to Phil Melugin, president, chief operating officer and co-owner of Integrity.

"We were able to do market research and establish an unmet need," Melugin said.

He said Integrity's basic services include nursing care and personal care assistance; physical, occupational and speech therapies; respite care; and tele-monitoring and emergency monitoring services. The company also offers private-duty, private-pay services such as transportation and shopping.

Broadening horizons

The Osage Beach office - Integrity's sixth location, which opened Jan. 12 - will enable the company to expand into about five more Missouri counties, according to Beth Stevens, public relations supervisor.

Integrity employs more than 2,000 staff members and caregivers, according to previous Springfield Business Journal coverage. Melugin said the Osage Beach office has four staff members and is the home office for 10 caregivers.

Lisa Getson, executive vice president of government relations for Lake Forest, Calif.-based Apria Healthcare, which has an office in Osage Beach, said Apria works with home health care companies across the country. She doesn't expect it to be any different in Osage Beach.

According to its Web site, Apria offers a wide range of home respiratory therapy, diabetic supplies, medications and equipment, home infusion therapy and home medical equipment services.

"If anything, we will be able to work together to enhance some of the services offered there to the people of Osage Beach," Getson said. "The services they offer provide a critical role in making sure that patients can stay at home, as do ours."

Integrity's seventh office is slated to open Feb. 16 in Kansas City, Kan., with two staff members. Caregivers will be added as needed.

"We do all of our services for home health and physical therapy, and there will be some more services that will be moving into that area later ... in the year," Melugin said.

Stevens said Integrity's office in Independence had served patients in Kansas.

Melugin said that a conservative cost estimate for opening the two offices is $250,000.

Hometown expansion

Integrity posted 2008 revenues of $40 million, Melugin said, up 25 percent compared to 2007.

He said he's received several offers to sell the company and is contacted by brokerages about twice a month.

But company leaders don't plan to sell the business.

"We made a commitment when we started that we would not sell the company out from underneath the employees, and if they stuck with us, then we had a chance to be successful," Melugin said.

Work is under way now on a larger headquarters location for Integrity. The company, now located in 16,000 square feet of leased space at 4247 S. Glenstone Ave., purchased the 35,000-square-foot former ProCycle building at 2960 N. Eastgate Ave in a $2.8 million transaction that closed Sept. 29.

The company plans to move there in June after renovations are completed.

"We are outgrowing this office," Stevens said. "We have people crammed in corners."

Stevens said the company is growing because of word-of-mouth and the quality of its services.