10 Things You May Be Surprised to Know About VNSNY Partners in Care

This article is the first in an ongoing series in which Frontline will be highlighting different lines of business, programs, departments and teams across the organization. Our aim in running this series is to enhance the VNSNY employee experience by spotlighting all parts of VNSNY, revealing things you may not know, and bringing our staff closer together. If you know of a VNSNY department or group that you think should be included in this series, please let us know by clicking here!

Thanks to VNSNY Partners in Care home health aides (HHAs) and clinicians, thousands of older New Yorkers are able to stay in their homes rather than go into a nursing home or other facility. Here are 10 things you may not know about Partners in Care.

1. Partners in Care is the largest of VNSNY’s business units in terms of workforce size. In fact, the business line employs a total of 6,700 staff members.

2. It has some of VNSNY’s longest-serving employees. A number of home health aides have been with Partners in Care for nearly four decades, going back to when it became part of VNSNY in 1983.

3. With over 6,100 home health aides, Partners in Care is one of the largest employers of certified HHAs in New York State. Its HHA workforce is also a key reason why VNSNY is one of the largest home care providers in the U.S.

4. Partners in Care provides four types of services:

• Home health aides whose services are covered by Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurers;
• Home care services for clients who pay privately;
• In-home nursing assessments and personal care services for managed long-term health plan members;
• Professional nursing services—Partners in Care is the largest provider of nursing services in New York City’s Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities.

5. Besides HHA support for its clients, Partners in Care also offers private-pay nursing and rehabilitation therapy and other home care services. Its staff includes: 180 RNs and LPNs; 7 rehabilitation therapists; 60 people involved in scheduling, customer care, administration, and HR; and 280 clinicians and non-clinicians who work with our CHOICE Total members.

6. Partners in Care home health aides help their clients remain safely at home by assisting with their activities of daily living. This may include helping them bathe and get dressed, shopping for clients’ food and preparing their meals, and escorting them to appointments. In providing these services, HHAs follow a plan of care that is developed by their supervising RNs.

7. Partner in Care HHAs and clinicians work with patients and members across a range of other VNSNY programs. For example, they provide care for members of CHOICE Health Plans as well as VNSNY Home Care and Hospice patients. They also provide these same services under contract to a number of other health plans and home care providers in all 5 boroughs of New York City as well as Westchester and Long Island.

8. The HHAs who work with VNSNY patients undergo 125 hours of training, nearly 50 additional hours above and beyond the New York State requirement. This training includes learning to alert clinicians when a patient’s symptoms need to managed more closely and reporting these changes with the use of technology. In fact, Partners in Care is the first LHCSA (licensed home care services agency) in the state to be approved to train home health aides online, using its first-of-its-kind Hybrid Training Program.

9. A number of Partners in Care HHAs have been trained to serve as health coaches. These specialized HHAs help clients live healthier lifestyles by showing them how to improve their diets and get more physical activity.

10. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, thousands of Partners in Care home health aides put on their PPE and continued to care for their clients. For many of those clients, their HHAs provided a vital connection to care at a time when they were otherwise isolated. “I can’t say enough about our thousands of HHAs who didn’t miss a day or even a shift during the pandemic, and who kept finding new ways to get where they had to go,” notes Jim Rolla, Senior Vice President of Partners in Care. “They are a truly dedicated and brave group.”

To read similar articles in the series on other teams in the organization, click here.