The Central Coast Visiting Nurse Association offers at-home
visits by physical therapists, chaplains, social workers, home
health aides and more
Nick Caputo hops into his Ford Escape and exits the Hollister city limits. His SUV winds around the curvy road, past scenic vistas of vineyards, farmland and steep cliffs.
Finally, he heads up a narrow, perfectly paved road, merlot vines on both sides, and turns off the engine. In front stands a beautiful home, washed in warm morning sunlight and silence.
Caputo smiles. There’s a reason the physical therapist has remained with the Central Coast Visiting Nurse Association for five-and-a-half years, and it’s not solely because of this one setting.
“The patient really opens up because they’re in their own environment,” he said. “Home care is the wave of the future.”
Patients who sign on with Central Coast Visiting Nurse Association don’t have to make the trek to the hospital or doctors’ office every time they need treatment. Instead, the nurse, physical therapist, occupational therapist, home health aide, chaplain, dietitian or medical social worker, makes the trip.
Central Coast VNA treats patients in or around Hollister, Gilroy, Morgan Hill, Salinas, Monterey and King City. Although they’re affiliated with the nationwide Visiting Nurse Associations of America and adhere to the nationwide organization’s strict set of rules, the Central Coast VNA operates independently, said Mitch Matthews, who works out of the Monterey office as director of provider information.
Central Coast VNA was established 55 years ago and the nonprofit employees about 85 nurses and therapists. Patients can choose to use their services and they work with all health insurance companies.
They even provide care to some uninsured individuals, a service made possible through donations. Staff makes more than 80,000 home visits annually.
Technology, such as telehomcare, which gives nurses the ability to visit patients virtually in their homes, also plays a vital role in VNA’s business, Telehomcare was first tested four years ago in King City and Hollister and has been fully operational for more than a year, said Margie McCurry, CCVNA Director of Development and Communication.
Televisions are placed in the patient’s home and hooked up to a phone and connected to the main monitor in Monterey. Nurses are able to check vital signs, weight, blood pressure and even the progression of a wound, through the system.
If the patients blood pressure is low or a wound looks infected, then VNA will send a nurse to the site or call a doctor if it’s an emergency. But if everything is going well, the nurse doesn’t have to make an unnecessary trip.
“It allows us to better utilize our scarce nursing staff,” McCurry said.
Also, without the new system some individuals, such as heart patients who need to be monitored on a daily basis and those who live in isolated areas, would not be able to leave the hospital. Instead of having to drive three hours out to a woman’s ranch to find out she’s O.K., we can just check her progress over the phone lines, McCurry said.
That technology and the services provided by VNA are better for the pocketbook since patients aren’t racking up the pricey fees of a hospital stay.
When Caputo enters the home, his first assignment of the day, he’s greeted warmly by the patients’ husband, a sweeping view of vineyards and the telltale smell of bacon.
And when Della Otahal, who Caputo is treating for a recent fall, emerges from the room and explains, quite contentedly, that she had a full breakfast of bacon and eggs, while her husband stuck to cereal.
“How you feeling?” Caputo asked. “Are you having any pain today?”
The 35-year-old takes Otahal’s blood pressure and then helps her perform exercises in the kitchen. Since it’s such a nice day Caputo asks his 76-year-old patient if she wants to take a stroll around the house and reap the benefits of the sunshine’s natural vitamin D.
Otahal agrees.
Caputo began serving as a physical therapist 10 years ago. The married father of two had pondered a career in dentistry and as a doctor but decided the former was too boring and the latter required too much school.
Since he’d always liked helping the elderly, he found his niche as a physical therapist, a job which mostly requires work with older patients. After working in a traditional setting for five years, he and his wife moved back to his hometown of Hollister and he landed a job with the VNA.
“I’ve never worked for a place that’s been this good,” Caputo said. “There (hasn’t been) one day when I had a problem with VNA.”
Accident Rehabilitation
For Taralyn Yuste, VNA is invaluable.
The 41-year-old Hollister resident was driving on a curvy road near San Juan Bautista on Christmas and fell asleep. She was ejected from the vehicle, probably through the roof she said, when her Suburban rolled numerous times.
Yuste was found on the side of the road with most of the skin and muscle on her left shin gauged out. Somehow she had escaped without a scratch on the rest body, marveled her mother.
Yuste spent six weeks at Stanford Hospital, with a leg the “size of a football,” she said. The doctors told her that five years ago they would have had to amputate her leg.
Instead, they inserted a steel rod in her leg that will stay there permanently, and used plastic surgery to fill in the missing skin and muscle.
“Because of visiting nurses I was able to come home from the hospital,” said the mother of five.
The hospital was ready to place her in a nursing home before Yuste heard about VNA.
While her mother watched One Life to Live in the living room of their cozy country home, Yuste laid on her bed in the other room waiting for her nurse to arrive.
Yuste is living with her parents while she recovers. Her family set up a room downstairs, next to the living room, with a hospital bed. She can’t walk right now and has to use a wheelchair, which makes her weekly trips to Stanford Hospital a big pain.
“It’s bad enough driving up to Stanford,” Yuste said.
That’s why it really helps to have Celia Jimenez, a registered nurse, visit about three times a week, sometimes more depending on her needs, to change the bandages on her leg and check on her well-being. The registered nurse even makes Saturday visits, Yuste points out.
Jimenez began her career in medicine as a nurse at Saint Louise Hospital before it moved to the current Gilroy location. When she saw an advertisement for a job opening with the VNA, Jimenez applied for the position assuming the hours would enable her to spend more time with her children.
She’s worked for VNA for the past six years. Although she spends a lot of time on the road covering the Gilroy and Morgan Hill areas, the Hollister resident often relishes the travel time.
“The traveling helps because when I have a day that is draining, that’s when the traveling time comes in handy,” she said.
Also, Jimenez enjoys working for a business that enables people to convalesce in the best place possible for both their mental and physical well-being: their home.
“I think it helps a patient in the way that they get the family support, they get less depressed,” she said. “That way they don’t have to stay in the hospital too long. At home it will be less expensive they’ll be in a more comfortable place.”
How to Help
– Donations can be sent to Central Coast Visiting Nurse Association, PO Box 2480 Monterey, Calif. 93942
Make checks payable to Central Coast VNA. Donations can be designated for specific programs or areas.
– VNA offers various services to uninsured patients such as home care, hospice, pediatrics and adult day centers.
To volunteer or for more information contact, Margie McCurry at (831) 375-9537.
-VNA treats patients in Hollister, Gilroy, Morgan Hill, Salinas, Monterey and King City. The program is an affiliate of national organization Visiting Nurses Association of America.
