Miriam Allred (00:01)
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Home Care Strategy Lab. I'm your host Miriam Allred. Today I am sitting across from Amy Pierce, the co-founder of Coastal Care Partners based in Savannah, Georgia. Amy, welcome to the lab.
Amy Pierce (00:15)
Thank you, Miriam, and I'm super happy to be here.
Miriam Allred (00:18)
You were a recommended guest, which are my favorite, honestly, from Jenny Johnson out in California. But she was just in your office a couple of weeks ago and she and I have spent some time over the last couple of months and she said, you've got to have these people on. And so I met you and Scott pretty recently, but had heard of Coastal Care Partners and had heard amazing things. And so I felt like this was long overdue for us to get acquainted, but also to have you on the show. So thank you for being up for this.
Amy Pierce (00:43)
Aw, thank you so much. And thanks to Jenny also. Jenny's doing amazing things also.
Miriam Allred (00:48)
Yeah, and I just love that when we're all connected in different pockets of the country and doing innovative things and nurse led businesses. There's just so much we have in common and so many things we don't have in common, so much to learn from one another. that's a great example of her and you and thinking differently about your model. let's go ahead and start with your background. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your healthcare background and then we'll get into founding Coastal Care.
Amy Pierce (00:55)
Absolutely. You know, I would love to start off by kind of telling a story. So I'm a nurse and have been for over 20 years. I'm also a certified aging life care professional through the Aging Life Care Association. And about 15 years ago, I was working in a super busy, always overwhelmed, insurance-driven medical practice. And man, we were always every single day running behind.
And one day I saw this very sweet elderly woman coming in from the waiting room and she was walking in with a walker, moving really slowly and a medical assistant was bringing her back and every few steps the little elderly lady would look up at the medical assistant and smile and start talking to her and the medical assistant was kind of trying to move her along and getting a little frustrated and eventually she gets her back into an exam room.
And then she comes up to me and she says, gosh, we are never getting out of here. Could she be any slower? And you know, I thought to myself, gosh, the problem here is not this sweet lady that is moving too slowly to want to talk to us. The problem is that our system, our healthcare system moves too fast for aging bodies. And you know, that moment has stayed with me and...
I didn't know exactly what it was that I was gonna do, but after working in hospice and seeing how complex care navigation is for older adults and their families, and then also after walking along my in-laws' aging care journey, my husband and I, we decided to launch Coastal Care Partners, which is a company based around the speed and dignity of aging.
Miriam Allred (03:06)
Yeah, the speed and dignity of aging. so just high level share your healthcare background. What are all kind of the roles and functions that you've played leading up to then starting this business?
Amy Pierce (03:20)
Absolutely. So I've been in a lot of different areas as a nurse, which is a really cool thing about being a nurse. There's so much you can do. So I've worked in emergency room. I've worked on med surge floors. I've worked in oncology, spent a long time working in hospice. And, a lot of my career has been around working with older adults. I've worked in ambulatory surgery centers and I've worked in pain management and primary care.
and really just saw in every space how much need there is for helping our older adults with quality care and being able to slow down and give them all the things that they really need.
Miriam Allred (04:05)
You probably feel that way more than ever now, but think back to when you were in kind of the acute setting. Did you understand the post-acute setting? Obviously you had moments where you saw the lack thereof for these seniors, but does the acute setting still really not understand like the post-acute setting in the senior care space? And are we getting closer to them understanding that or are we still so far off?
Amy Pierce (04:31)
you know, I think we're still a ways off and know, healthcare is very, very fragmented and healthcare is broken in a lot of ways and it's really hard for anybody to navigate, but it's especially difficult for our older adults. And you know, like 20 years ago, you could, as an ER nurse, spend time with people when they discharge and you could make sure that they understood each appointment they need to go to and understand all of those follow-up instructions. Now there's no time. Now there's limits on how long you can spend with patients and it's all because of insurance and the models that are driven by the insurance world.
Miriam Allred (05:10)
Yeah. And like you and Scott, there's only so much you can do. You you as a nurse, and I'm sure you gave a lot and did as much as you could and, you know, pushed back against kind of the social norms, but there's only so much you could do. And so at that point, I guess at what point did you decide, like, we want to go out on our own and build something that we can control and that we can impact more lives?
Amy Pierce (05:35)
Absolutely. You know, I think that it's a combination of the professional experience and personal. So, you know, professionally, I was seeing it every day, especially in the hospice world. Families are struggling to deal with complex health issues. One of my loved one isn't eligible for hospice. How are we going to navigate all of this? And then at the same time, Scott's parents were going through complex health issues of their own. His mom was around 80 years old already on a decline with dementia and very frail in a wheelchair. His father had a new diagnosis of congestive heart failure. And at that time, Scott was living in Atlanta. They were here in Savannah. And so we walked through what's going to happen now. Who's going to help care for them once he gets out of the hospital? He's got a new pulmonologist, a new cardiologist, a new GI doctor. Who's going to manage all of this? And Scott will tell you he had kind of a panic attack of, I'm in Atlanta, what's gonna happen here? And so, you we like to say that Fred and Ruth Pierce, that Scott's parents were our first coastal care partners clients, because we managed the process of his discharge, his new diagnosis, and then bringing in care, and then seeing the lack of kind of services around. And we said, you know what, there should be a service for somebody with medical background can come in and just say, I've got this, I'm gonna navigate all of this for you. I'm gonna help guide you through next steps. I'm gonna coordinate your care. I'm gonna manage your medications. I'm gonna bring in a caregiver when needed, you know, and I'm just gonna help you understand all of it. And that was really the beginning of Coastal Care Partners. We launched here on Skidaway Island where we live in Savannah, Georgia, and I was the first nurse and, just started caring clients. We put an ad out and got a few calls and word of mouth. And once I got up to about 10 clients and families that I was navigating their care, we then brought in the next nurse and the next nurse. And that's when we really started to see the need for high quality in-home care.
