Brentwood-based Senior Solutions Home Care today announced its merger with Murfreesboro-based @Home Care, creating one of the largest non-medical home care providers in Tennessee and enhancing the quality of services provided to seniors in Williamson County.

Seniors needing daily support, limited to meal preparation, cleaning, and assistance with personal care, are relying more and more on non-medical home care.

The realization that a growing “gap of service” existed brought Kunu Kaushal, of Brentwood, and Melissa Warren, of Murfreesboro, together.

“Our goal is to provide continued seamless service to all our clients. This task will be made easier because the Senior Solutions business philosophy is similar to that of @Home Care – to provide quality care and to nurture long-term relationships with our employees and clients. The experience and expertise of the @Home Care staff will be a valuable addition to the Senior Solutions Home Care organization,” said Kaushal, Partner and CEO of Senior Solutions Home Care.

@Home Care was founded in 2011.  Warren brings eight years of experience to her new role as partner and chief development officer at Senior Solutions Home Care.

“@HomeCare had perfected how to market it and we had perfected how to operate it. Together we will have 20 management staff in place,” Kaushal said of the strengths of both companies.

“[Senior Solutions] has a satellite office in Knoxville in addition to our Brentwood and Murfreesboro offices,” he said.  “We cover 64 counties in East and Middle Tennessee.”

Since the 1970s, the federal government has provided an exemption to employers of home care aids that means they are not required to pay overtime. The ACA changed that, and now a caretaker working around the clock and on the weekends must be paid overtime beginning in January.

“The Affordable Care Act, Companionship Exemption, and potential minimum wage increase bring opportunities and challenges to home care providers. Becoming a larger and more efficient company allows us to take advantage of those opportunities and face those challenges, while still providing excellent care,” Warren said. “I am excited to join hands with another strong and privately held local business.”

“Many people were hired as a live-in caregiver, and people were not paid time-in a half. The industry has changed [since the 1970s law went into effect] and become much more commercial,” Kaushal said, adding that the change has not been embraced by everyone.

“You have people on both sides of the aisle. On one hand, caregivers are happy because they’re going to be paid more. On another side, the cost of staying home is about to go up.”

Currently, Senior Solutions has private pay clients as well as referrals from a Medicaid program in Tennessee call Choices, which operates as a nursing home deferment tool.

With this merger, the agency will serve more than 300 clients with more than 300 caregivers with 300,000+ projected service hours in 2014.

“We will do more than five million in business. The majority of our competition is mostly franchised-in organizations. The difference with us is I’m actually a native Williamson Countian.

Kaushal, who grew up here and attended Battle Ground Academy before earning his bachelor’s degree in business management with a minor in health care, is not new to supporting the needs of seniors.

He describes his father, Dr. Raj Kaushal, as “a visionary” who saw the growing healthcare needs of seniors developing back in the early 1990s. His mother, Ann, has owned Wellington Place, a private assisted living residence in Brentwood for 30 years. Dr. Kaushal, who specializes in geriatric medicine, is a chief clinical officer of SunCrest Home Health.

“We have 50,000 individuals turning 65 every day, this gives everyone the chance to stay at home because no matter how much building happens …with nursing home and assisted living it is not going to be enough,” Kunu Kaushal said.

The aging in place strategy is one that will be examined by families more closely as parents determine how to juggle their assets along with the added expenses associated with growing older, Kaushal said.

For more information, call (615) 377-6566 or visit www.sscares.com.

http://www.williamsonherald.com/communities/brentwood/article_69ea7776-0622-11e4-a7fa-001a4bcf6878.html