Celebrating 50 Years in Home Care

Office move, service area expansion, leadership transition, and stakeholder events mark milestone anniversary

Silver Spring, MD – Family & Nursing Care, the premier resource for in-home care services for older adults, celebrates half a century in business in 2018 with an office move, service area expansion, leadership transition, and a series of events for key stakeholders. Family & Nursing Care recently moved from 962 Wayne Avenue in Silver Spring just down the street to a larger space at 1010 Wayne Avenue. In addition, the company is currently expanding its service area coverage to include Anne Arundel and Howard Counties. Neal Kursban, formerly President of Family & Nursing Care, is now Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Jeff Zukerman, previously the company’s Chief Operating Officer (COO), has assumed the position of President. The company is celebrating throughout 2018 with current employees, caregivers, professional partners, and clients and their families.

“This is an exciting time for Family & Nursing Care,” said Neal Kursban, Family & Nursing Care’s CEO. “Our expansion will help us serve more families who can benefit from our unique approach to home care, and my transition to CEO will allow me to focus more on working directly with our professional partners to meet the evolving demands of the healthcare system.”

According to Kursban, strategic growth has been part of the company’s plan since his mother, Sandy Kursban, started Family & Nursing Care in 1968. He says now is the time because private duty home care has shifted from being considered a luxury to becoming a necessity. The number of Americans aged 85 and older is projected to more than triple from 5.8 million in 2010 to over 19 million by 2050, so manageable, strategic growth in private duty home care is imperative. Eventually, the company has plans to expand across the mid-Atlantic region.

“Family & Nursing Care is well-positioned for innovation and expansion because of our flexibility,” said Jeff Zukerman, the company’s new President. “We are proactive, while also maintaining a strong infrastructure and ensuring our partners’ expectations are exceeded and clients continue to receive top-tier care.”

Kursban and Zukerman are vocal about the moral imperative to grow the company because of the superior care they provide older adults. It is an opinion shared by the industry. In 2017 Family & Nursing Care was recognized as one of the top two best private duty home care agencies nationwide (out of 26,000+) by DecisionHealth™.

About Family & Nursing Care

Since 1968, Family & Nursing Care has been the premier provider of in-home care services for older adults, dedicated to and recognized for their passion and commitment to serve, help, and enhance the quality of life and well-being of others. The company refers and provides caregivers who assist with activities of daily life, companionship, and also skilled nursing care. As one of the oldest, largest, and most well-respected providers of home care services in the suburban MD and Washington, DC region, the company is dedicated to providing compassionate, progressive, and reliable home care services and continues to break barriers and set benchmarks for the home care industry. For more information, please visit www.www.familynursingcare.com.

Understanding Long-Term Care Insurance

Industry leaders predict that the use of Long-Term Care Insurance (LTCI) for home care will keep increasing as the nation’s older population continues to grow. Jesse Slome, director of the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance (AALTCI), explains that “most long-term care insurance claims begin and end in the home, wherever home may be… and having a long-term care insurance policy can help pay for some or even the entire cost of home care services.”

While financial support helps offset all or some of the cost of home care services, the complex rules of LTCI plans can be difficult to understand and cause more headaches than relief. At Family & Nursing Care, we recognize this challenge and have made it a mission to simplify the reimbursement experience by having a department, led by our LTCI Manager, Karin Martinez, to handle all clients’ LTCI questions and concerns.

An in-house expert on everything LTCI, Martinez is a staunch client advocate. We spoke with her to find out exactly how she fights for proper coverage/reimbursement and strategically assesses each client’s LTCI policy to ensure that they are reaping their policy benefits to the fullest extent, allowing family members to concentrate on their loved ones.

What do you do in your role as Long-Term Care Insurance Manager?

“LTCI policies can be challenging to navigate successfully (it is insurance!). My goal is to make sure our clients know they have someone on their side to help them through every step of the process. One of the ways we help the most is by always facilitating a conference call with the client/family member and their LTCI company to help ensure they have a full understanding of their policy’s criteria, benefits, and policy holder responsibilities for a smooth experience with the reimbursement claims process. From that point on, I offer as much or as little support as they need.

In addition to educating families about various nuances in their LTCI policies and assisting with the complex paperwork, I often see myself as an interpreter. During calls with LTCI companies, the language being used is very much “insurance-speak” that not every lay person may understand. It’s my job to then translate what they say into understandable terms, or give real life examples, until I’m confident that the client’s concerns and questions have been answered fully.” 

In what way do you think you bring the most value to your clients?

“The more I help clients navigate the complicated LTCI system, the more I realize that they really needed an advocate—it’s more than just making one call to the LTCI company with the client/family to understand the policy benefits—it’s about seeing the whole process through so the families get their reimbursements to which they are entitled.

I’ve seen people get so frustrated and overwhelmed that they just want to give up dealing with all the paperwork, the requirements, and the inevitable waiting period of their LTCI claims reimbursement. I know our clients have paid much of their hard-earned money into their policies and this inspires me to support them and encourage them to stay the course. Another value is that, with my support, families have more time to focus on the most important thing—their loved one.”

What are some of the specific ways you go above and beyond for your clients?

“I am proactive in submitting records to LTCI companies. I also help clients identify other benefits outside of home care in their LTCI policies (e.g., care manager service, Assisted Living or Nursing Home, home modification, lifeline benefits, and more). I also provide support with appealing claim denials. And finally, we offer an Assignment of Benefits (AOB) arrangement for Family & Nursing Care Select clients, where we invoice and get payment directly from the LTCI company, which means Family & Nursing Care Select takes on the financial risk of receiving reimbursement, rather than the client.”

What’s one of your favorite stories about a client you have helped?

“Recently, we had a client who didn’t want to file a LTCI claim at all. He didn’t think his policy would qualify and he didn’t think he would meet the criteria for his elimination.  I convinced him that it may be worth a try…perhaps his days of care would count towards that elimination period so that he would be closer to getting his LTCI benefit in the future when he needed more care. On our conference call with the LTCI company, we ended up finding out that his elimination period would be waived for home care services. He did qualify and ended up getting $11,000 back for the 6 weeks of care. This is money he never expected to receive.”