FXBG Neighbors Podcast
Fredericksburg Neighbors Podcast
FXBG Neighbors Podcast
EP #54 Aging in Place: How Visiting Angels Helps Seniors Stay Home
The growing "silver tsunami" is creating unprecedented challenges for families trying to support aging loved ones. As Chris Dickey of Visiting Angels Fredericksburg reveals in this compelling conversation, most seniors share one powerful desire: to age gracefully in their own homes.
Having transitioned from a successful marketing career at the Martin Agency to taking over his parents' 21-year-old home care business, Dickey brings unique perspectives on senior care. He addresses the jarring reality that many families face—Medicare and Medicaid rarely cover home care costs, leaving families unprepared for the financial responsibility. Even more concerning is how seniors often resist care until a crisis occurs, typically a fall that forces the issue. "It's better to start small and start now," Dickey advises, emphasizing that early intervention preserves independence rather than diminishing it.
What truly sets professional caregivers apart is their role as the "foundation of community care." With modern families often scattered across the country, Visiting Angels caregivers become the vital connection between seniors and their distant loved ones. They provide not just assistance with daily living but serve as early warning systems for changes in condition that might otherwise go unnoticed. As Dickey explains, this vigilance can prevent hospitalizations and improve quality of life. With 10,000 Americans turning 65 daily, the demand for compassionate caregivers who can maintain this crucial role will only increase. Have you had conversations with your loved ones about their care preferences before a crisis forces the issue?
Chris Dickey
Visiting Angels of Fredericksburg
visitingangels.com/fredericksburgva/home
sales@fcangels.com
+1 540-373-6906
2200 CARL D SILVER PARKWAY, Fredericksburg, VA
This is the Fredericksburg Neighbors Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Dori Stewart.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to another episode of the FXBG Neighbors Podcast, where we share the stories of our favorite local brands. I'm excited to introduce you to my guest. Today we have Chris Dickey joining us with Visiting Angels of Fredericksburg. Chris, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 3:Thanks so much, Dori. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for being my guest. I'm excited to learn more about you and your business. So let's start there. Share with us a little bit about Visiting Angels.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so Visiting Angels has been in the Fredericksburg market now for 21 years. Wow, it was started by my parents and the premise of Visiting Angels it's a national franchise. We're one of the largest now in the world 600 franchisees, think about seven countries but the premise was a simple one that most seniors would ask about how they want to spend their silver years and age gracefully will say that they would like to stay in their homes, and so that's how the business was designed 25 years ago and that's how it's expanded to where it is today.
Speaker 2:Amazing so 21 years, and I love that it's still in the family. So congratulations. That's a huge milestone getting past 20 years.
Speaker 3:It is. It's amazing and it's funny. My daughter's in college at William Mary, and she said "'I don't know, dad, I might wanna get into the business'. So maybe a multi-generational business. We'll see.
Speaker 2:That's so cool, We'll see. That's so cool. I love that. So tell me a little bit about your background. You know what led you to want to carry on the family business?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's kind of an interesting journey. So my background is in marketing. I spent the vast amount of my career so 20 plus years working for advertising agencies. My last agency was the Martin Agency in Richmond, virginia, of Geico fame, and after being on planes and being around the world and working with corporations, I decided I wanted a career that gave back to the community and made a difference in people's lives and it's not to say that advertising didn't, but it's not quite direct and easy to discern. And so when my parents decided it was time for them to retire, I said you know what? I would like to make a career transition, and so I'm going to learn this business. And I actually took over the Fredericksburg office and then I bought Charlottesville, and then I bought Stanton, waynesboro and Lexington, so we cover about 300 miles in the state of Virginia now.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's amazing and, yeah, I imagine you get so much satisfaction out of what you do.
Speaker 3:I mean, you're helping so many people directly, so that's it it's amazing, um, we get these letters, um, when our cases end and they almost all go the same way. Our caregiver x and it's usually tina, and they usually say it's it's our angel was the best friend to my mom or dad. The family could not have done it without her and we couldn't be happier with the choices we made to keep our parents at home. And so we get those letters all the time from our cases. We do believe that we hire angels. The people that do this work and take care of seniors truly have a passion for caring, and that's what keeps everybody going every day.
Speaker 2:That's amazing. I love that. Thank you for sharing that with us.
Speaker 3:You bet.
Speaker 2:I love it. So tell me, do you find that there's any misconceptions about the industry or about Visiting Angels?
Speaker 3:You know there are a lot of misconceptions. Probably the biggest one is that insurance pays for home care and so when the family is now faced with, you know mom or dad needing that extra level of support, they believe that Medicare and Medicaid is going to cover all of their home care, and in most cases it doesn't cover very much, if at all, although there are some new programs an exciting one that just launched recently called Guide, that does cover some amount of dementia care for families and that just launched this year and covers some respite care. But by and large families need to have saved for care in the home and so most of our clients either have long-term care they pay privately or they could be a veteran, and veteran does have home care hours. But outside of that, you know that's usually the misconception that your mom was just discharged from the hospital and so we'd love to hire you guys, and here's her insurance. And you know that's where we say well, in most cases there's only a few agencies that even take that insurance Medicare and Medicaid. Partly it's a state by state issue to reimbursement, but that's probably shock number one to the system.
Speaker 3:Shock number two is that seniors by and large fear that getting care will take away their independence and so they're reluctant. And I can't tell you how many calls we get all the time. What you know, usually from seniors or family members. They know their loved ones need care. They're reluctant to start. We always say it's better to start small and start now, and then, you know, half the time we'll get a call in three or six months, and now they have to start. Mom fell, she broke her hip and now there's no choice. We have to have care. And falls, by the way, are the number one issue with seniors and the number one reason to usually have to start care is that there's a fall in the house.
Speaker 2:So interesting. So maybe you know some advice for listeners is to start before. Maybe you think you'd need it so that you have someone there to help avoid a fall.
Speaker 3:Yeah, have these conversations with your parents. I'm there, even with my parents. Have these conversations early, have a game plan. Just be you know. Give them the pitch that if they want to stay at home, they're going to have to start early with care. It's not going to take away their independence. In fact, our caregivers pretty much allow them to live the same lives that they always have. They can transport them, they can help them with pet care, they can do meal preparation. You know, really we basically do all the activities of daily living for our seniors and allow them to stay in place as long as they want.
Speaker 3:So have that conversation early and have a game plan. Don't wait till it's forced upon you.
Speaker 2:Really good advice. Thank you for that really good advice.
Speaker 3:Thank you for that.
Speaker 2:So I imagine you're very busy. You cover a lot of ground, and so tell me when you do get some time off hopefully you get some time off. What are you doing for fun?
Speaker 3:you know, um, I, I do get some time off. I have really good office teams and we have really good caregivers and that makes all the difference. But you know, in my extra time, strangely enough, I love to go out and exercise and get in the outdoors and so you know, I'm usually riding my bike up in the Afton Mountain area between Charlottesville or Waynesboro, when I can I take it to work and I'm usually out doing you know, men's activities like F3, where we're working outside, rain or shine. So I've just integrated workout into part of my life schedule and so all the offices joke that you know, if I'm leaving early it's not because I'm headed home. I'm usually headed to the gym or headed to do some sort of workout yeah, well, what a beautiful area to get outside and exercise, it's absolutely gorgeous in that area yeah, no doubt, no doubt.
Speaker 3:And fredericksburg as well. And I get get out, do things along the rappahannock, do some of the tours, you know those sorts of things. So not to discount it, but there's just some great areas in virginia to get out and ride your bike.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely Love that. So what advice would you give someone who's listening, who is thinking about starting a business? You've been involved in business and you know marketing and then this, so you have a lot of experience. What advice would you give someone?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know. I would say two things, and I know this, this old adage I found to be true and I've started three different entrepreneur businesses outside of this one. The first is that it is a marathon and not a sprint, and you really have to go in and look at a 10 to 20 year time horizon on your business. There are some lucky ones that start up something so big that it gets bought out immediately, but for most of us it's going to be a long-term journey and you have to get comfortable with that early on. The second is boring is a better option, and so I used to do a lot of work with tech stars and I started a technology business and all the kids want to do technology. But some of the most successful businesses are the most boring ones.
Speaker 3:You know it could be. It could be roofing, it could be plumbing, it could be any kind of franchise. It's just a basic franchise and I would say don't look past the franchise model. There's a big article in wall street journal, I think last week or week before, where a lot of kids are coming out and choosing the franchise model because there's already a brand, there's already a system. They'll help educate you, and so you know one out of 10 new businesses survive if you're going to start from ground up, but that number is way higher if you're in a franchise. So don't look past the franchise. You don't always have to invent it yourself. Sometimes the stuff that's already invented out there works really well and can help the community.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, really good advice. I love that, thank you. I heard someone say recently get really comfortable with the mundane.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, I mean it's steady and it's not going to be. We always you know everyone has conversations right now what's going to? All kinds of digital marketing and, you know, business kind of transformation things, but care of humans is certainly something that's not going to be disintermediated by the artificial intelligence.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. What is something that you wish the listeners knew about? Visiting Angels?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I just think that you know we are the foundation to community care and so a lot of people will look at the doctor or the hospital or home health or hospice.
Speaker 3:But the reality is we're the ones that are in there every day taking care of seniors.
Speaker 3:We're the ones that are in there every day taking care of seniors. Our cases sometimes will go as much to 24-7 care, and so we look at it as our responsibility to be that kind of glue for the community. And so we're always looking for the early change in condition. If we can see it and we can get ahead of it, we can notify the hospital, we can notify the doctor, we can let home health or hospice know, and usually that allows that patient to live longer in some cases, to live more comfortable in some cases. But at least not be surprised. And so that's what I always pitch to the community is we are not necessarily doing medical things every day for our clients because we're skilled non-medical technically, but we're the ones saying you know what? Mom's a little lethargic today or she's not staying hydrated or she you know these medications don't seem to be working, and so we can get in front of it and hopefully kind of stave off any kind of major future issues by just being the eyes and ears on the ground.
Speaker 2:Amazing, that's so valuable.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, because families aren't the same anymore. You know it used to be. Everybody lived in the same town and we're going to visit mom a couple of times a week. More often than not, our clients, you know the sons in California, the daughters in Texas, and they're trying to provide care for mom in Fredericksburg. They're not even with cameras, they're not seeing everything every day that's happening in the home, but we can be the eyes and ears for them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, amazing. If the listeners want to connect with you or learn more about visiting angels, where can they find you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, certainly on the website. They can stop by. We're in Central Park over by Wegmans Anytime nine to five. Stop in ask questions. We're always out educating the community. We do multiple education events where we just try to explain what home care is and how to choose an agency. We're working in an environment we call it the silver tsunami. 10,000 seniors turn 65 every day. The need for care is going to skyrocket in the big cities Now. Agencies are on the waiting list and so I don't look at any of our markets. As you know, I'm trying to steal all the competitors, clients, because we're going to be into a situation in the next couple of years where there's just not going to be enough caregivers for all the seniors that need care. But we, we, but we believe we're the best for a lot of different reasons not all reasons and so we're going to be transparent and educate, and that's why I would say stop by and talk to us, get all your questions answered and then make the best possible decision when the time comes and you need a care agency.
Speaker 2:Perfect, Chris. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today and sharing Visiting Angels with us.
Speaker 3:No, absolutely I'm glad to do it, and we all have seniors that we love and need to take care of, so I hope my message reaches a lot of listeners to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, thank you.
Speaker 3:You bet.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Fredericksburg Neighbors Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to fxbgneighborspodcast. com.