Good Neighbor Podcast: Colorado Springs
Bringing together local businesses and neighbors of Colorado Springs. Good Neighbor Podcast hosted by Tony Hills helps residents discover and connect with your local business owners in and around Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Is your business serving the residents of Colorado Springs? Then, we need to talk! Visit gnpColoradoSprings.com to schedule your free interview.
Good Neighbor Podcast: Colorado Springs
EP #91: Home Care Solutions: Staying Independent with Dennis Lewis of Aura Home Care
What makes Dennis Lewis with Aura Home Care a good neighbor?
What would it take for you to leave retirement behind? For Dennis Lewis, former military veteran and now a key figure at Aura Home Care, the answer was simple: a chance to make a meaningful difference in people's lives.
Dennis joins us on The Good Neighbor Podcast to share how Aura Home Care is revolutionizing elder care in Colorado Springs. After his wife, a registered nurse, identified an opportunity with a struggling home care business, Dennis reluctantly agreed to help "part-time." Four and a half years later, he's fully committed to their mission of keeping elderly, blind, and disabled individuals in the comfort of their own homes.
The services Aura provides range from essential homemaking tasks like cooking and cleaning to personal care assistance with bathing and mobility challenges. As Dennis poignantly explains, "People are afraid of being put in a facility," and Aura's personalized approach directly addresses this common fear. Their careful matching process ensures compatibility between caregivers and clients, fostering natural connections despite the technical limitations of Medicaid billing.
Beyond business insights, Dennis shares his remarkable personal journey of health transformation following a grueling year that included prostate cancer, an injury, and triple bypass heart surgery. These challenges inspired a shift to a plant-based diet that has him "healthier now than 10 years ago" – a testament to resilience and adaptation.
With a core philosophy borrowed from his military days – "take care of the clients first, then take care of the caregivers" – Dennis and the Aura team have built a thriving service that prioritizes dignity and independence. Whether you're caring for an aging loved one or planning for your own future, this conversation offers valuable perspective on maintaining quality of life as we age. Visit aurahomecarenet or reach out to the Resource Exchange at 719-380-1100 to learn more about their Medicaid-supported services.
To learn more about Aura Home Care go to:
Aura Home Care
719-232-7169
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Tony Hills.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. Are you in need of a home care provider? One might be closer than you think. Today I have the pleasure of introducing our good neighbor Dennis Lewis with Aura Home Care. Dennis, how's it going?
Speaker 3:Excellent, awesome, hey we're excited to learn about your business, so tell us about it, as to what you do. So we are home care providers, so the purpose of our business is that people will be able to stay in their homes, and so we send caregivers out to their home to do tasks that they need help with. Examples would be things as far as a homemaker you know sweeping, mopping, cooking, shopping, doing laundry. Things like personal care If the client needs help with bathing or with mobility. Different things as far as they would need personally to support them.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's awesome. How did you get into this business?
Speaker 3:Well, I tried to retire because I'm retired military, my wife is a registered nurse and she was working for a company that wasn't really working out and so, through her connections, she came up with this. The business had been sitting here for a year, from 2019 to 2020. And she said, well, they could use some help. Could you work in the office? And I said, well, I could probably work part-time. I had plans, you know, because I was retired, but I got into it and it was a transition for me, working with the elderly, blind and disabled. But I've been doing it for about four and a half years now.
Speaker 2:Okay, all right, awesome. What are some myths or misconceptions in your industry?
Speaker 3:One of the things that people are afraid of is being put in a facility. You can understand some people. They want to stay home and that's the purpose of home care, so people can stay home as long as possible and have the comfort of being in their own home. And we provide a personalized service so that there's always concern about. You know who am I going to have? As far as I know, in our business we try to match a good fit between the client and the caregiver and make sure that relation works out, because people like to have consistency. They like to build a relationship. Although it's kind of ironic that we're not actually we cannot bill for companionship, that's a natural outcome of this business.
Speaker 2:Okay, who are your target customers and how do you attract them?
Speaker 3:Well, they're elderly, blind and disabled. It's a waiver under Medicaid, or it's called Health First Colorado, and that may come through the resource exchange which is, I would call them, the broker between Medicaid and our agency.
Speaker 2:Okay, outside of work, what do you do for fun?
Speaker 3:My wife and I like to travel. Last year we went to the countries of Moldova, romania, bulgaria. We have plans to go to Poland. We've traveled to 32 different countries. We've actually taken a trip all the way around the world going west. So that's the thing we look forward to is going and traveling and going to different countries.
Speaker 2:look forward to is going and traveling and going to different countries. Okay, great, let's switch gears. Can you describe a hardship or life challenge you overcame?
Speaker 3:how it made you stronger. What comes to mind? Yeah, I've actually been in excellent health all my life, and then I've only been in the hospital three times in my life. I was born, had my tonsils out and when I was in the Army, they did some reconstructive surgery for my ear. Well, in 2023, I had quite a number of experiences four surgeries and I was in the hospital seven times. I'd like to say I got frequent flyer miles at the hospital and it was a total unexpected situation, because the initial was I came up with prostate cancer and so I went through prostate cancer surgery. My is I'm embarrassed to go into detail, but I almost cut my finger off when I was working in the garage over the summer, so I had to have that all stitched up.
Speaker 3:And then, in August of 2023, I went through triple bypass open heart surgery. So what that did was made me realize that being on the standard American diet which I was, you know, grew up in America that it was basically detrimental to my health, and so I made a lot of major changes and I'm healthier now than I was 10 years ago. I mean, when I go in and do checkups, I do it much better. I've gone more to a plant-based diet. I'm still drinking lots of water.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. And, dennis, please tell us just one thing they should remember about Aura Home Care.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I would say our real core competency is the fact that I'm not the owner and the manager. I can make the owner nervous, but the business works really good. We have grown significantly because our priority just like I learned when I was in the military was that take care of the clients first and then take care of the caregivers, and everything works out just fine.
Speaker 2:Okay, how can our listeners learn more about Aura Home Care?
Speaker 3:Well, we have a website called aurahomecarenet. Also, if someone's on Medicaid and they need home care services, then you would contact the resource exchange. Resource exchange is what I mentioned the broker between Medicaid and our agency and the resource exchange. The number is 719-380-1100.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Well, Dennis, I really appreciate you being on the show. We wish you and your business much success moving forward.
Speaker 3:Oh, thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the good neighbor podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to GMP Colorado springscom. That's GMP Coloradoingscom, that's GNPColoradoSpringscom, or call 719-679-4720.