How We Care for Our Caring Professionals:
PSS Home Care’s COVID-19 Response

In such a short amount of time, the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way the whole world operates.

In the United States alone, 20.5 million jobs have been lost since April — an unprecedented level of unemployment only matched by the Great Depression. To limit the number of infected people, many states are on lockdown.

This aggressive illness that has taken more than 78,200 lives in the U.S. alone as of writing time — and a staggering 80% of these mortalities are composed of older people aged 65 and older. As of today, there are more than 330,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases in New York, where our employees and clients live.

Our Company’s Response to COVID-19

At PSS Home Care, we are conscious of any and all things that can greatly affect the lives of those we care for. This is why at the onset of the pandemic, we’ve been quick to do the following measures:

This has enabled us to provide consistent care for our clients, especially to those who are living alone or are living in nursing homes or other home care facilities.

Aside from providing guidance to our home health aides while they are at work, we are also keen on providing them with health protocols that they would need to observe in order to keep their families safe and healthy.

“During these challenging times, we believe in the power of being extra vigilant, cautious, and protective of our family members, team members, and loved ones,” remarked Luisa Remponi, our very own Director of Patient Services.

To ensure that our employees are always guided, we’ve launched a more frequent and regular company-wide communication protocol, wherein we provide information from the Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention (CDC), as well as give our employees guidance on what they can do to keep themselves, their clients, and their loved ones safe and healthy.

“Our company always reminds us to take care of our loved ones in our homes, too. They remind us every night via calls or web conference meetings to remove clothing and shoes before entering the house and to immediately take a shower to make sure that we’re not bringing anything inside our homes after our shifts,” shared Connie Ongtangco, one of our home health aides who continues to work amid the pandemic.

Aside from our brave front-liners, our office team has also been working from home — even before the start of the statewide lockdown.

“We decided to be extra cautious and had our office employees start working from home as soon as possible. Through technology, we are able to serve our clients as well as our frontline workers while remaining inside our homes,” stated Bryan Estranero, our Business Development Manager.

“Staying at home is not just about being safe from COVID-19, but also and I think, more importantly, it’s lessening our chances of becoming carriers of the disease to the community or to those who are immunocompromised, immunosuppressed, and older adults,” Bryan added.

Starting May 1, we started providing free COVID-19 tests for our employees. As of writing time, around 50 employees have been tested and the majority of our employees have tested negative.

“We believe that early testing is crucial to the efficient identification of cases which would turn help them get immediate help and treatment. Some of our employees have tested positive for COVID-19, unfortunately, but we do our best to provide them with the tools and information they’d need to self-isolate safely. We make sure to provide them with a strong foundation of health information that would allow them to recover as quickly as possible,” remarked Luisa.

As governments around the world patiently wait for a successful vaccine to protect their citizens from this pandemic, we will strive to keep our employees, our clients, and our loved ones as safe as we can.

“Our culture of caring has always been our company’s stronghold – and we are going the extra mile to introduce stringent health measures so that we can keep caring for our clients as effectively and safely as possible,” stated Luisa.

Credits: Images by studiogstock / stories / Freepik