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The Elara Caring Hall of Fame

We’re proud to recognize our team members for providing outstanding service that exemplifies our mission. We deliver exceptional personalized healthcare services wherever you call home.

Elara Caring Hall of Fame

Q1 2022 Hero Awards

The Elara Caring Hero Award program honors team members who have gone above and beyond to serve our patients where they live. These awards are presented to our heroes who keep the patients at the center of everything we do. Below are the most recent winners of our Hero Awards:

The BCH (Behavioral Health Chicago) Team won the 2022 Q1 Elara Team Quality Award for their teamwork and collaboration with leadership to improve their outcomes to achieve a 5 Star rating for their branch in behavioral health. The BCH Team’s openness to learn and operationalize feedback matched their determination to maintain this 5 Star standing. Additionally, when faced with growth challenges, they created opportunities together. This team is passionate about bringing Behavioral Health services to as many of the underrepresented Chicagoland individuals in need of Elara’s services as possible. Their determination and passion for Elara’s services combined with their belief in the value and quality of the services we provide lead them to exceed their growth goals, recruiting team members that share a palpable bond. This inspirational team’s energy has reenergized activity in nearby branches. As a result, more behavioral health patients are now being seen and receiving the quality care we are all so proud of!

Frank S.
Frank S., RN, won the 2022 Q1 Elara Outstanding Service Award for Behavioral Health. Frank’s passion for behavioral health is reflected in the exceptional care provided to his patients, who for many, have so few others in their life who care and advocate for them. His passion and dedication to ensuring patients receive the care needed is also demonstrated in his willingness to actively reach out to community providers to educate them about the services available to their patients within Elara, and the value added offered in their care by doing so. This quarter, Frank began working with a young man with schizophrenia. The patient had no family and minimal support, leading to multiple hospitalization over the past years, with very short periods of time remaining in the community. Frank is an expert in the art of engagement and through his patience, a trusting partnership was created. Providers listened to Frank’s clinical assessments and recommendations and this collaboration led to medication modifications and the beginning of this young man’s experience of connection and hope. Our patient remained in the community for the longest time ever without a return to the hospital and began to explore part time employment. Alongside his exceptional patient advocacy, Frank also promoted growth through recruitment efforts to invite others to join the Elara behavioral health team, which means more of the underrepresented patient population are now being seen and cared for.

Lisa M.
Lisa M., RN, won the 2022 Q1 Elara Outstanding Service Award for Home Health. Lisa not only manages and oversees all wound care patients throughout her region, but she also holds a dual role as a supervisor of home health aides, a team of over 60 caregivers. As the wound care expert, she trains managers and clinicians directly on proper wound care healing and support. As a result, the Northeast division, related to its expertise in wounds, has become a preferred provider with multiple prestigious institutions, including Yale New Haven Health and Hartford Hospital. Lisa also nationally manages formulary supplies to ensure our clinicians are well trained on proper selection of the most efficient and effective equipment for optimal patient care and outcomes, saving her division $107K because of her training, education, and support.

Shaenna H.
Shaenna H., RN, won the 2022 Q1 Elara Outstanding Service Award for Hospice for offering to assist a neighboring branch in need of a case manager, while managing her own full case load. In addition to helping cover visits, Shaenna promoted grown in the facilities where she was assigned with feedback that the sites had never worked with a more thorough hospice nurse. After this success, she took on another role by offering to take on new hire training at a third branch location, which was a tremendous success. She continued making visits in this new territory while checking in on new team members and volunteering to help any team within her region that needs it. Shaenna also took part in focus groups to improve quality care for our residents, which included documentation, individualizing plans of care and making sure emergency preparedness algorithms were followed for our residents.

Kielea L.
Kielea L., Attendant, won the 2022 Q1 Elara Outstanding Service Award for Personal Care Services. Kielea worked an average of 33 hours per week while carrying a full-time class load at college. Recently, one of our Veterans was faced with a major dilemma in his care, with limited time authorized by his insurance provider and no way to cover extra care costs out of pocket. This wheelchair-bound client required extra hands-on care with no family members available to assist outside of the daily visits Elara was providing each morning. Kielea volunteered to cover 90% of his visits and split his time in half, covering an hour in the morning and in the evening to better cover the care he needed, despite her own school schedule. This ensured our long-term client received the care he needed to remain safe and healthy in his home. He expressed his gratitude for her sacrifice and stated that she was one of a kind in her caring, dependability, and responsibility.

Melissa E.
Melissa E., VP of IT, won the 2022 Q1 Support Award for leading the deployment of new internal communication tool that provided a platform for engaging personal care attendants directly, communicating with them more effectively, and providing a host of application features and system shortcuts that have been readily received by over 9000 team members to date.  Notably, this deployment happened in rapid fashion. In Q1 alone, Melissa coordinated release planning, launch events, and led the development of engagement strategies with personal care leadership, working with local branch teams on content and technology development requirements across multiple teams and vendors. Her relentless energy and enthusiasm were crucial to driving the deployment of this ‘game-changing’ capability that is now rolling out company-wide.


Q1 - 2022 Value Awards

Elara Caring’s Value Award Program recognizes five team members who best represent our company’s core values of Exceptional Service, Integrity, Teamwork, Results and Innovation every quarter. Below are the most recent winners of our Value Awards.

Paige C.
Paige C., MSW, won the Q1 Exceptional Service award for going above and beyond in her patient care and involvement his quarter. When a patient faced relocation with no moving assistance, Paige gathered her family and a team of volunteers to help. She took on extra weekend hours to provide care to two other patients facing financial hardship and neglect and advocated for them to move to new locations. Paige also recently supported a patient through a difficult hospice transition by lending extra time and help to the spouse. She never waivers in her level of service, regardless of patients changing their minds about long-term placements or facilities and listens to the families to best meet their needs. Paige exemplifies Elara’s core value of exceptional service on a consistent basis.

 

Amanda M.
Amanda M., Scheduler, won the Integrity Award for Q1. Amanda is honest and has strong moral principles. She is honest, kind and always does the right thing. Her entire team trusts her judgment and the clinicians she schedules for look to her to help them provide care at the right time and place.

Tracy T.
Tracy T., Field Supervisor, won the Q1 Teamwork award when taking on another co-worker’s caseload who was unable to work for over a month due to an accident. Tracy worked overtime to meet the challenge of an additional caseload of 175 clients on top of her own caseload. This additional caseload was located 90 minutes away from her area. She helped onboard numerous new hires during this time and even drove an extra 2 hours to help one provider with their system access. Despite the extra work Tracy still completed every task on time. She did whatever it took to meet her commitments, and shines as an example of teamwork.

Cheryl R.
Cheryl R., CTM, won the Results Award for Q4 for working diligently to improve metrics in her branch.  She recruited staff to increase volumes and met episodic admissions goals for several months. Cheryl worked with staff to improve their synching time and has been over 93% for several months.  She works closely with staff to understand their needs and how to see that they can meet the needs of Elara. Cheryl has managed the patient episodes and promoted growth by tripling the census this quarter. Patients receive quality care in this top performing branch thanks to Cheryl’s efforts and proven results.

Lorenzo G.
The Q1 Innovation Award was given to Lorenzo, Intake Coordinator, for taking an active role in the success of the overall hiring process of personal care attendants at Elara. He was instrumental in helping to develop a reference sheet that decreased in-field hiring process time for attendants being hired. This form is now used company-wide by all field supervisors. Lorenzo’s easygoing nature, clear insight and guiding vision has garnered the respect and admiration of staff, clients, and the attendants alike.


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