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Silvercare: New Company Finds a Niche in Nursing Home Services
By Getahn Ward, The Tennesean
May 17, 2009
Frazer Buntin and his business partner found a niche in what some consider a source of embarrassment for many nursing home residents.
They started Silvercare Solutions in February to capitalize on Medicare rules that required nursing homes to do more to ensure that residents are properly assessed for incontinence and provided with comprehensive care services.
Silvercare brings nurse practitioners to nursing homes to treat residents, relieving the homes of the need to hire specialized staff, find urologists to see the elderly residents in their clinics or transport residents there.
“It’s an overwhelming problem for nursing homes, so they could provide a needed and helpful service,” said James Powers, associate professor of medicine and director of senior care services at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. About a third of nursing home residents are incontinent, he said.
Silvercare got off to a fast start by acquiring the private practice of a geriatric nurse practitioner that delivered incontinence services to nursing homes in Philadelphia.
It is using the model of that practice to expand in Tennessee, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, where it operates in 48 homes.
Nina Monroe, director of nursing at client Bethany Healthcare Center here, said the nursing home already is seeing improvements in some residents since signing up with SilverCare about a month ago.
Previously, a gerontologist examined residents with incontinence, she said, adding that having specialized care helps to get to the source of conditions that cause the residents’ discomfort.
Medicare and some commercial insurers pay for the services.
Silvercare draws on Buntin’s background at Healthways, where he had worked on a product that delivered on-site health and wellness services to employers.
Buntin also said he was motivated to launch Silvercare by personal experience; he lost his grandmother four months after she broke her hip hurrying to the
restroom at a Nashville nursing home.
“Seeing there’s opportunity to do something was a personal commitment,” he said.
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