No.6, Integrity Home Care

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but for Integrity Home Care, the parts are what make the company successful.
Led by three owners – Phil Melugin, chief operating officer; Paul Reinert, chief financial officer; and Greg Horton, chief service officer – Integrity is gaining momentum, and for the second year is among SBJ’s Dynamic Dozen honorees.
By the end of 2004, business was up by 52 percent compared to 2003, Reinert said. The company declined to provide revenue numbers.
Founded in February 2000, Integrity Home Care focuses on four areas of care: in-home care, private-pay services, pediatric private-duty nursing and home health services.
Integrity employs 1,100 – with approximately 600 employees in southwest Missouri – up from 850 employees last year.
Integrity has grown physically as well. In 2004, Integrity added 3,500 square feet to its Springfield offices, 4247 S. Glenstone Ave., and 2,000 square feet to Integrity’s Joplin office. The company also operates an office in Independence.
Reinert said that the company plans to open a fourth office in Missouri by 2006.
The key to growth comes back to providing care for a wide range of clients, Reinert said. The majority of Integrity’s staff provides service for 1,100 clients in southwest Missouri and 700 clients in the Kansas City area.
“This area has grown by a net gain of 100 clients in the Joplin area and 100 clients in the Springfield area,” Melugin said.
Much of the company’s work is in providing in-home service programs that are paid for by Medicaid.
“It allows us to provide basic custodial care to folks in their homes so they can have their needs met. They can remain healthy and … stay at home versus having to go to a nursing home,” said Kimberly Lorenzen, Integrity’s executive director of business development. In-home services include housekeeping, meal preparation, bathing assistance and additional aid.
One outgrowth of the home-care services is the company’s home-health division, which is growing. At the beginning of 2004, company officials said, that division had 80 clients, and by the end of that same year, there were 155 – and that’s just in the southwest Missouri market.
“One of the reasons we became a certified agency in home health was because we had this group of … clients who didn’t want two different agencies coming into their home,” Lorenzen said.
Home health services are more short-term, designed to help people get back on their feet with services like physical and occupational therapy. A third area of specialty is pediatric private duty nursing, which increased in southwest Missouri from 25 clients at the beginning of 2004 to 45 clients at the beginning of 2005.
“(It’s) a service line that is pretty near and dear to our hearts. We provide nursing services to children with special needs,” Lorenzen said. “(We) have families (whose) lives would have to be put on hold if it weren’t for
agencies such as ours that provide services.”
Pediatric care is for infants and children through 18 years of age. It is funded through government monies designated for special needs and is often a cheaper alternative for insurance companies and families looking to avoid excessive health facility fees.
“We provided services for one family where there was an infant who had been in the neonatal intensive care unit round-the-clock for months on end,” Lorenzen said. “The hospital bills were outrageous, so we brought the child home and provided 24-hour nursing care for them at home, and it was win-win for everybody,” Lorenzen said.
Another growing area of business is private-pay services.
“Essentially, if a person has the funds to pay us privately, we can provide any kind of service they want – whether that be meal preparation or companionship. There are really no restrictions on what we can and cannot do,” Lorenzen said.
As the demand for services increases in these four areas, the owners said they plan to reinvest in the company.
“We want to build a broad and deep infrastructure, and that has been our biggest challenge – to not crumple under the weight of our success,” Melugin said.
Reinert added, “When we are in the good times we are not going to be greedy, and we want to be prepared for the bad times, because this is definitely a long-term commitment between the three of us.”