Category Archives: The Buzz

Home Care Sector Opens New Doors

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Calgary HeraldThe Calgary Herald, May 7, 2012
By Derek Sankey

At 27, Carrie Bolen has seen the hectic pace of a hospital setting up close. As a registered nurse (RN), she remembers one day at her job on a busy medicine transition unit when a patient received a very difficult diagnosis. The patient’s family couldn’t be there, so she was alone to contemplate her new reality.

“What she really needed was someone to sit beside her, to hold her hand and to be a listening ear,” Bolen says. “I tried to provide what support I could, but I had to tend to the needs of four other patients.”

It struck a chord. She decided a busy hospital setting wasn’t for her. A friend told her about a home-care company and she made the move to Calgary from Edmonton two years ago to work for Nurse Next Door Inc.

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Creating a Culture for Care Giving

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Fox Business, March 30, 2012
By Nancy Colasurdo

Oh, the stories they tell, those folks from Nurse Next Door. A home care services company based in Vancouver with about 50 locations across North America, its care givers know there is more to looking after a senior citizen than making sure she has her meds squared away.

“This is our difference,” franchise partner Carol Lange tells me in our recent interview. “We ask, ‘What did you used to like to do before you got sick? How can we get you back to that?’ They don’t really know stuff that is missing from their life until it’s added back in.”

What a tuned-in observation. So often when adult children look in on family members, they unwittingly begin to see the senior citizen as simply their medical issues. That’s why Nurse Next Door prides itself on a culture that is fertile ground for delicious stories like getting someone on the putting green for half an hour or in a pool for a swim. There’s functioning and then there’s living.

This is what sprouts, I suppose, when you begin a company from a place of nurturing. Co-founders John DeHart and Ken Sim learned firsthand what standout care meant to loved ones and it only reinforced what had already been their clear mission.

“Just because someone is a nurse or care giver doesn’t mean they should be,” DeHart says in our recent interview. “We hire the smile.”

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Women Embrace Franchising

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Fincial Post

Finacial Post, March 26 2012
By Derek Sankey

Lucie Shaw’s story is becoming an increasingly common one – a sign women are slowly making strides in entrepreneurship, especially in franchising.

Frustrated by trying to find home health-care services for her in-laws, she decided to leave her operations manager job at Air Canada during its restructuring to open a home care franchise in early 2009.

Her Mississauga, Ont., location made buying into a Nurse Next Door franchise a reasonable financial commitment that let her pursue a passion for being a caregiver. “I was blown away by the core values and the passion of the business,” Ms. Shaw says.

“When you find the business that suits who you are and can also suit a family lifestyle, it becomes a perfect fit.”

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Middle Managers’ Engagement Key to Company Success

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Profit Magazine

It’s a bad day at the office when a company’s founders realize they hate the firm they started and want to quit. It’s even worse when their middle managers not only agree but openly question their bosses’ vision and goals.

This was the grim situation at Nurse Next Door Home Healthcare Services Inc. that convinced John DeHart and Ken Sim that they had two choices: to sell the firm they had worked so hard to build or to transform it completely.

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Vancouver’s Canadian-born Chinese in their 30s and 40s make their mark, no small thanks to Milton Wong

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Vancouver resident Ken Sim has a life that many would envy. As the cofounder of Nurse Next Door, the self-made entrepreneur oversees a thriving Canadian home-care company with 50 locations. This year, he and his business partner, John DeHart, expect to generate $26 million to $30 million in revenues. Sim, a married father of four, and DeHart have been profiled in magazines and spoken at their alma maters, and are regularly courted by investment bankers who want to turn Nurse Next Door into a public company listed on a stock exchange. Continue reading →

No place like home

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Walt Heaslip is a pretty happening 92-year-old: He makes his own wine, walks two hours a day and is quite the charmer with the ladies. As a retired police officer, he was even featured in the Toronto Daily Star in 1947 for foiling a counterfeiting plot, and has the article framed on the wall of his Burlington home to this day. Continue reading →