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Agency marks two decades
of providing in-home health care
By KATHERINE HIGGINS
The Smithifeld Herald
August 2, 2003
SMITHFIELD, N.C. (AP) _ For one local firm,
July 24 marked two decades of providing medical care in the home.
The Smithfield office
of Home Health and Hospice Care, or 3HC for short, celebrated the company’s 20th
anniversary last week.
“We are still
providing the same excellent care we’ve always provided,” said Karen
Stephenson, 3HC’s marketing director.
Home Health and
Hospice Care came to Smithfield in 1991, when the Mt. Olive-based company was
expanding its reach by opening offices in Johnston, Jones, Pitt, Sampson, and Wilson
counties.
From its office on
Nobel Street in Smithfield, 3HC serves patients in Johnston, Harnett and Wake
counties. “We offer all the basics – skilled nursing, physical therapy,
occupational therapy, speech therapy, and home-health aides,” Stephenson said.
Mostly, patients come
to Home Health and Hospice Care through doctor referrals, although family
members, hospitals and insurers can arrange care also, Stephenson said.”Hospice
is for terminally ill patients. If they want to, they can pay privately for nursing
or health care.”
The Smithfield office
has a staff of almost 50 and a core of volunteers, Stephenson said. “I think
our strength would be the quality of the nurses on our staff,” she said. “Also,
we have excellent management from our management team.”
Although she is a
corporate officer, Stephenson chooses to work from the company’s Smithfield
office. “Because I live in Smithfield, they let me base my office here,” she
said.
Because birthdays are
best celebrated with parties, 3HC offices held cookouts for their employees on
July 24. That day, employees walked away with T-shirts, insulated lunch bags,
and 20th anniversary lapel pins.
“We got quite a few
door prizes from local businesses,” Stephenson said.
The company went so
far as to design a 20th anniversary logo, and it found a way to make
that process a charitable one, Stephenson said. For her winning logo design,
April Nolan received a scholarship for her studies at Johnston Community
College in Smithfield.
While the local
branch is only half as old as the company itself, Stephenson said the
Smithfield office was planning to grow. “We are probably going to be moving into
another facility, De. Selden’s old office behind the hospital,” she said.
For more information about 3HC services, please write to 3HC, attention:
Director of Community Development
Home Health and Hospice Care, Inc.
2402 Wayne Memorial Drive
Goldsboro, NC 27534
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