Nurse Next Door Maple Ridge is proud to announce that it has been selected for the Business Excellence Award (21+ employees) at the 2011 Business Excellence Awards held annually by the Maple Ridge/Pitt Meadows Chamber of Commerce. The Awards recognize and honour business excellence, and celebrate businesses that have made a significant contribution to the community and quality of life by demonstrating outstanding business leadership, innovation and success.

“We’re extremely excited about being nominated and being selected for an Award for the 2^nd year in a row,” said Nurse Next Door franchise owner, Carol Lange. “Our entire team is incredible in their devotion to their clients, and very deserving of such an award. Everyone has worked very hard over the past three years to build a thriving, sustainable
business in these wonderful communities.”

The franchise services Pitt Meadows, Maple Ridge and Mission, and expanded to
Coquitlam and Port Coquitlam in 2012. “At Nurse Next Door, we do whatever it
takes to keep our clients happy, safe and comfortable at home. We have a team that
lives and works in the local community, including companions, certified care
aides and nurses, and they are out there every single day making lives better. Our
clients inspire us to always be at our very best.”

With four Core Values underpinning every aspect of business operations, Nurse Next
Door places an emphasis on exceptional customer experiences, employee recognition,
passion and innovation. Nurse Next Door Maple Ridge won Best New Business at
the 2010 Business Excellence awards and this is the 2^nd year it was
nominated in multiple categories – Business Excellence, Customer Service,
Community Service, and Business Person of the Year.

Nurse Next Door Maple Ridge is a local home care company dedicated to delivering
responsive, caring and high quality care services in the communities it serves.
The company specializes in both home support and medical care, offering a full
suite of services that allow seniors and others to remain healthy, happy and at
home.

Edith Clark’s eyes light up when asked about The Sardine Eater, the children’s book she authored in 1992. Although, it’s difficult to understand what she is saying, you can tell the 80-something Clark is proud of her book, and of her daughter Brenda Clark, an architect who illustrated the book.

The News met Edith Clark at the Pink Heart Club, which she attends three times a week.

“Our dentist in Steveston told me about the program and I thought it might be something that would be good for my mother,” said Brenda Clark, adding her mom has lived with her for more than 15 years. “Fortunately this program really suits my mom and she enjoys coming here.”

Her mother suffered a stroke a few years ago, which left her with Aphasia – a neurological disorder caused by damage to portions of the brain. It causes difficulty in expressing oneself when speaking, trouble understanding speech and difficulty with reading and writing. Aphasia is not a disease, but a symptom of brain damage.

Her daughter said it’s a cruel irony for a woman who loved words, and was an accomplished artist and author.

Brenda Clark was looking for a program that didn’t feel like her mom was in an institution. She was attracted by the small number of participants (only seven per day), and by the various activities.

But the program, which began last month, comes with a price. It costs $46 for a four-hour day, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., although members can arrive a half hour early or stay a half hour later.

“Mom is very artistic, she was an actress back in Austria and she loves to draw and paint. there’s a lot of stimulation for Mom here,” she said. “The first day Mom attended she told me what they did and she really seems to enjoy her time here.”

Meanwhile, another mandate of the program is to help Edith Clark regain some of her speech back through games and activities.

“For example, we use recognition cards and a workbook to help Edith’s speech and recall,” said Richmond’s Nurse Next Door franchisee owner Kim Kendrick, who has a roster of 115 employees, registered nurses, licensed practical nurses and caregivers.

Across from Edith Clark, 71-year-old Norah Ferguson is drawing, while caregiver Laurel (who asked her last name be kept private), watches on.

Ferguson, who lives with her daughter in East Richmond, was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. She comes to the program twice a week.

“I like everything about the program, the painting, the drawing, the long walks and the lunches,” she says with a big smile on her face.

Meanwhile, deep in thought, 89-year-old Jo Wong is playing cards with Kendrick. The cards are oversized because Wong has limited vision and mild cognitive issues. But it doesn’t seem to bother Wong. He smiled easily and often and clearly seemed to enjoy the company of the ladies.

“I come twice a week and it’s fun,” he said quietly.

For more information, call 604-644-5524, or visit www.NurseNextDoor.com

THE DEAL’S IN: Nurse Next Door principals John DeHart and Ken Sim met 10 years ago this month. But the man who put them together and green-lit their international home-care company just missed the anniversary. Former investment-firm head Milton Wong died at age 72 on Dec. 31, six months after telling friends and colleagues that inoperable cancer would see him spend his remaining time as “a modern-day monk.”

There was nothing cloistered about Wong’s view of business and its place in world affairs. Regarding Nurse Next Door, it began with a near-revelation, and later entailed the self-denial that profit-takers seldom relish.

Back to January 2001, though, when Sim ended five years of investment and merchant banking with CIBC Capital. Like Sim, former venture-capital information-technology specialist DeHart also planned to start or acquire a business. Wong knew of that through DeHart’s father Bob, who was a partner in M.K. Wong & Associates and became CEO when the firm morphed into HSBC Global Asset Management (Canada) Ltd. in 1996. He also knew Sim through investment opportunities the latter had conveyed.

Urged by Wong to powwow, the two resolved to buy a firm that manufactured fleece jackets. But bankers left them shivering. “We’ll lend you $200,000,” Sim recalls being told. “But you have to put [it] in an account at no interest, and we’ll loan it back to you at thirteen-and-a-quarter per cent.”

Soon after, Sim’s then-pregnant wife Teena was ordered to emergency bed rest. When a hired caregiver said she’d yet to meet anyone at her dispatching agency, Sim and DeHart’s entrepreneurial light went on. Planning to consolidate the home-care industry rather than establish the franchising firm that actually evolved, they raised half the needed $500,000 from family and friends. Wong became the key.

“We spent an hour with Milty, and he got it right away,” Sim said. “We were two young guys with no operational experience and none in health care. All he had was a 12-page term sheet. But he said, ‘The deal’s in,’ and signed up for a quarter-million. He had the ability to look into the future. He saw something, and he believed in it.”

Wong still saw it last spring when recommending BLO Blow Dry Bar founder Judy Brooks join Dehart and Sim as chief of staff. “It’s health care,” she recalls him emphasizing. “It’s the next global issue.”

What Wong didn’t see was the Nurse Next Door name. “He hated it. We thought he’d want his money back,” Sim said of a moniker his entrepreneur brother-in-law, Rob Cheney, had proposed. Still, outsiders’ enthusiasm convinced Wong otherwise, and NND business cards soon identified him not as chair but “Raving Fan.”

“Solid Supporter” would have been apt in 2007. That’s when DeHart and Sim wished to drop a client that accounted for 80 per cent of NND’s $17-million revenue but compromised the firm’s principles and dismayed its tight-knit staff. Recalling that M.K. Wong & Associates’ assets once fell from $3.5 billion to $1.5 billion before rebounding, the two knew Wong was resilient. “Did you think this through?” he asked, when they presented a case that clearly imperilled his investment and dividends. After weighing their conclusions, he said: “Then pull it.”

“If we’d kept that contract, John and I would no longer have mortgages on our houses,” Sim said this week. Nurse Next Door rebounded, too, he said, and may take in $28 million this year. That knowledge likely cheered Wong during his final days as a modern-day monk.

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/First+Nurse+Next+Door+Wong+legacies/5984149/story.html#ixzz1jMes4LhA