Care Across America
"Care Across America, an Approved Senior Network® Podcast"—your go-to source for engaging conversations and practical insights from home care and senior care experts across the United States. Each episode will spotlight industry professionals, and their referral networks, sharing impactful stories, proven strategies, and innovative solutions in senior care. This podcast is perfect for professionals, adult children of aging parents, and family members struggling with senior care choices and care.
Care Across America
What Happens in Vegas Stays in Good Hands: The Golden Companies
Ever wondered what a truly comprehensive approach to senior care might look like? Bob Swatkins has built exactly that with his Golden Companies consortium in Las Vegas, creating a seamless ecosystem where seniors can transition through different levels of care while staying within one trusted organization.
Swatkins walks us through his impressive portfolio of services: Golden Heart Senior Care for in-home personal care, Golden Years Senior Concierge for independent seniors needing occasional help, Golden Brook Residential Care Home for memory care and assisted living, and their newest addition – Golden Heart Hospice. This vertical integration allows clients to start with minimal services and gradually increase support as their needs evolve, all while maintaining relationships with caregivers and staff they've come to trust.
The Golden Brook Residential Care Home stands out with its personalized approach – licensed for 10 beds but configured for 9 to ensure greater comfort for residents with memory challenges, stroke recovery, Parkinson's, or age-related needs. Their consistently full occupancy and waiting list speak volumes about the quality of care provided, with virtual tours available on their website for prospective families.
What makes this model particularly valuable is how it benefits everyone involved. For families, it means consistent care without the stress of finding new providers at each transition point. For staff, it creates flexible employment opportunities across service lines. For Swatkins, it enables greater quality control throughout the entire care journey. Located strategically in Sun City, Summerlin – Las Vegas's largest senior community – the Golden Companies exemplify how integrated senior care can simplify what's often a fragmented and stressful process.
Ready to see what comprehensive senior care looks like? Visit weprovidegoldencare.com to explore their services and take a virtual tour of their facilities. Your loved ones deserve the golden standard in care.
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My name is Bob Swatkins. I'm located here in Las Vegas, Nevada. I'm the owner of the Golden Companies, which is a consortium of businesses here in Las Vegas that caters to seniors. I own Golden Heart Senior Care, which is a personal care agency. I own Golden Heart Hospice, which is a hospice company. I own Golden Brook Residential Care Home, which is a memory care home, which is located here in the Las Vegas Valley, and I also own Golden Years Senior Concierge, which is a senior concierge company that serves seniors who aren't ready for care but still need certain help around the house.
Speaker 2:That is a lot, and it's been amazing to watch you guys grow over the years. So let's start with. If somebody calls your office for any reason whichever, and they may not know what kind of help they need Sometimes they don't how do you start that conversation, or what can people expect when they call?
Speaker 1:Sure. So when they call, there's different prompts for different types of businesses. If they're not sure, they can talk to someone in a member of our office who will point them in the right direction. They'll get a call from one of our family liaisons which will reach out to them and basically talk to them at a very personal level, try to understand what their needs are and then, based on that, then we can point them in the right direction, whether we can help them personally with any of our service lines or if we need to refer them to someone else.
Speaker 2:And so you pretty much cover the entire gamut of services at this point. So if someone is ready for home care services, or believe that they are, do you have instances where they start home care, they're doing great, and then maybe they need to transition to something a little bit more all-inclusive, like 24-hour care? Have you had that happen?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, that's quite common. Generally most of our clients come on with very limited services a number of hours per week, and then they grow within the company. They go from, let's say, three or four hours a day to seven or eight hours a day, and then some of them will transition to 24-7 care, depending on the cost and their ability and their resources. Some of them will even transition to the Golden Brook, which is our assisted living care home, and then we have them for life generally when they come into the care home environment. So it's not uncommon for our patients to become our clients, to become patients and to become residents in our business service levels.
Speaker 2:And tell us a little bit about the care home. How many beds is it or how many folks are there?
Speaker 1:Sure, golden Brook is a licensed memory care home. Not all of the residents that are in Golden Brook are memory. There's a combination of people who need help because they've had a stroke or Parkinson's or just simply old age, and then there's clearly the residents that suffer from dementia and things of that nature. It's licensed for 10 beds. We have it set up for nine beds because it's just more comfortable that way. And it is full it's generally always full. It's very hard to get into. And it is full, it's generally always full. It's very hard to get into. People generally don't leave the home. You can actually see the home. If it's something that you're interested in. You can go to our website, weprovidegoldencarecom, and all the way in the footer it says tour Golden Brook and you can walk through it like you're walking through a movie. So you can click through it and you can look in each room.
Speaker 1:You can so it gives people an idea of what the environment is like. It's really a very cozy and warm environment for the residents and we get a lot of positive reviews about the home.
Speaker 2:That's great, and so you probably have a waiting list at this point.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, yeah, we're generally almost always full. It's a nice problem to have. So, yeah, we can't complain.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. You need to build about five more of those.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're certainly needed here in Las Vegas, I'm sure within the rest of the country. There as well, there's pros and cons to group homes and so forth, but we're very proud of Golden Brook.
Speaker 2:That's great, that's awesome. And talk about your latest addition to all your services, which is hospice care. So we're talking end of life and comfort and dignity. So tell us some more about hospice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the whole idea here was is to try to vertically integrate all of our businesses. The only one that we don't have yet and that might be coming here in the near future would be either like home health or PCP of an element, so we can literally control the entire care process. That was my thought when I first started doing this, because a lot of times you have to rely on outside partners and if your partners aren't really up to the task, sometimes the level of care that your clients receive isn't what you really expect. So when you have everything under one roof, under one ownership, you have a lot more control over the level of care that everyone receives under your umbrella, if you will.
Speaker 1:The hospice company is brand new. We're in the process right now of getting our first five for Medicare credentialing, so we're very excited about that. Yeah, and I've partnered up with a nurse practitioner that has many years in the hospice field, so we're going to be off to a really good start. We have really good high quality medical and clinical people that have joined the team, so we're going to be off to a really good start. We have really good high quality medical and clinical people that have joined the team, so we're very excited.
Speaker 2:That is exciting, that people can rely on anyone else. What comes to mind, besides it being exciting for the seniors that might ebb and flow through some of these services, is that your caregivers always have hours. They always have, whether they're you can, I guess you can interchange them. They can go work at the home and they can work in home care and they can work in hospice. So you, it seems to me like not only will you need more caregivers, but you'll also be able to beg and borrow and steal from one service to another and make sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's certainly synergies that are related to having all of these service lines, and where you really it helps out quite a bit is in the back of the house. When you're dealing with marketing, you're dealing with HR, you're dealing with scheduling, you're dealing with field care, coordination, all these types of things, you already have that support system established. So when you add on a different service line, it's not that you can absorb it entirely, but you have the ability to get it off the ground much easier with an established staff, and my staff is absolutely fantastic. I love each and every one of them. Our schedulers are amazing. Our HR department is absolutely amazing. Our marketers are super hardworking. They do a fantastic job. So I'm very blessed to have an amazing staff and I love every one of them.
Speaker 2:That's wonderful. It's so great to have people that you can rely on as an owner that have been with you for a very long time, and even those new folks on the hospice side. How nice to have nurse practitioners and folks coming on board right away. I know that's such a benefit to all the families who are relying on you for one type of care or another, and I'd agree that having everything under one umbrella not only makes it easier for you I know there's always challenges, but for the families that go from one part of life to another is a nice thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think where it really helps the families is, let's say, you bring them on with personal care and you're doing help in the home, you build trust and you build a relationship with these families. So when it comes time to moving to the next level of care, it's a very easy transition because they already know and trust you.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And people like to do business with those they know and trust. So it's a pretty easy transition for someone to become a client, to become a patient.
Speaker 2:It sounds to me like you pretty much own all of Las Vegas now.
Speaker 1:No, there's a lot more. Las Vegas is a pretty dynamic city. There's a lot of good providers here and, frankly, there's plenty of business to go around. We have a really nice community here. It's a little toasty in July and August, but other than that, the rest of the year is fairly comfortable and we have some really fantastic providers here in Las Vegas.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's great. I know that. What if we don't live in Las Vegas? What most of us see is not the reality of all of Vegas you really are. It's a large metro area and a half million people who live here in the city and it's really growing like crazy.
Speaker 1:A lot of good things that are happening here. If you like really good food and really good entertainment, this is the place to live.
Speaker 2:I would agree. I would agree on both of those. But yeah, I know there's a whole nother side of things that the tourist part of us don't see, but having really good providers and really good care out there there's so many seniors move to Las Vegas and enjoy that area so much so you're doing that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, our office is located in Sun City, summerlin, which is the largest senior community here in Las Vegas. There's about 9000 homes around our office, so we're smack dab right in the middle here. It works out really well. So, yeah, we're very. We're smack dab right in the middle here. It works out really well. So, yeah, we're very, we're very blessed.
Speaker 2:I want to thank you for filling us in on all the amazing stuff you have going on there, and we'll make sure all your phone numbers and website and everything's available for everyone who watches this. So thank you.
Speaker 1:All right, thank you so much, valerie. I certainly appreciate all your time.
