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Julie Calderon has been meeting Lewis County’s healthcare and medical needs through her part-time business, Faith Home Care Practitioners, for the past five years. Starting next week, Calderon, who has been a nurse practitioner for Valley View Health Center the last seven years, is shifting her business to full-time in order to aid the senior citizen population.
Faith Home Care Practitioners provides primary and medical care services to patients who are homebound, primarily senior citizens who live in adult family homes and assisted living facilities. Calderon’s treatment area covers Lewis and Thurston counties, with plans to expand to Cowlitz County.
She does not currently have a physical clinic with an exam room, only an office that she works out of, as all of her work is healthcare delivery. Rather than face-to-face visits, Calderon has mostly used telemedicine, where patients can see her online through video. Not until recently has she been able to visit facilities, and she plans to be tested weekly for COVID-19 to ensure she’s safe to be around patients.
“They’re such a vulnerable population because they’re elderly, so we just want to be sure we don’t infect them,” Calderon said.
She is a solo provider with one medical assistant, Ericka Long, who can draw lab work. The business uses a company that can perform portable radiology services such as X-rays and ultrasounds. Her husband, Emilio Calderon, helps run the business as well.
“We’re basically bringing the clinic to you,” Calderon said. “I want the community to know I’m available.”
She wanted to start doing this full-time after noticing housecall providers traveling to Lewis County from Seattle to treat patients. The competitive advantage Calderon has is she actually lives in the community and is more accessible. She said many of these elderly patients are unable to visit health clinics, due to many factors, including impaired mobility, cognitive disabilities, such as dementia, and it’s often unsafe for them to visit a clinic and risk contracting COVID-19.
Bringing care into their home settings is a safer option for them and less traumatic, especially for those with dementia, as wait times can often stretch to hours long. Calderon can see them on the spot or through video call.
Calderon and a business partner started Faith Home Care Practitioners in 2015, but she has been running it solo the past four years. It became too difficult to work full-time in a clinic and run her business at the same time, so she had to choose one.
“I want to take care of the most vulnerable patients,” Calderon said.
Calderon does not go to personal, individual homes as of right now. It’s more difficult and less safe when it’s not a controlled setting, such as at adult family homes and assisted-living facilities, which have 24/7 caregiving services. Their medications are being administered and it’s easier for Calderon to keep track of each patient.
“Not to say there isn’t the possibility in the future,” Calderon said. “Just right now I don’t have the capacity to do it.”
As a nurse practitioner in Washington state, Calderon has nearly the same privileges as a physician. Registered nurses cannot diagnose or prescribe. Calderon can prescribe medicine, diagnose illnesses and treat them. At Valley View, there was no distinction in what kind of patients she could treat, whether they be chronic disease patients, diabetes, depression, mental health issues, cardiovascular issues and congestion heart failure.
“I feel very comfortable treating patients with all kinds of conditions,” Calderon said.
Dementia has been a common ailment she’s seeing, along with depression, mostly due to the senior population having to be isolated from their families because of the pandemic. In a lot of the assisted living facilities and adult group homes, families can’t just come visit their loved ones for risk of infecting the elderly residents. There are visits at windows, but it’s just not the same, she said.
Treating patients in their home setting has its advantages, she said. It allows her to see any deficiencies. Is their home safe? Are they falling down a lot? A lot of her patients are homebound, bedbound and/or in a wheelchair. She has patients with appetite issues who are tube fed, so she monitors their diets.
“When we see them in a clinic, we don’t see what’s going on outside,” Calderon said.
She also works closely and collaborates with home-health agencies in the community, such as Providence and Assured Home Health in Centralia, to help get patients the care they need. When a patient is released from a hospital, she can see them within seven days.
“We do a very heavy load of things you can’t necessarily do in a 15-minute visit at a clinic,” Calderon said. “I spend more time with patients and I’m more accessible than a clinic.”
Calderon and her Faith Home Care Practitioners business can be contacted by phone at 360-996-4443. For more information, visit the company’s website at www.faithhcp.com.
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Reporter Eric Trent can be reached at etrent@chronline.com. Visit chronline.com/business for more coverage of local businesses.
