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Business offers transportation for seniors
BARRINGTON Sunday Jul 29 2012 Synergy HomeCare owners Diego Uribe of Barrington (left to right,) Anne Adams Oakley of Barrington, driver and CNA Alhassane Bah of Elmwood Park and Human Resource Lisa Babusch of Elgin, gather around their company van that the use to provides home care for seniors. | Michelle LaVigne~Sun-Times Media
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Name: CarePlus Transportation
Address: 1250 S. Grove Ave., Suite 200
Phone: (847) 382-1200
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Updated: September 17, 2012 11:56AM
Diego Uribe saw something as he was running his Synergy HomeCare, a home care service provider for the elderly.
People immobilized by age or a disability are often subjected to curb-to-curb service in bus-like vehicles driven by non-professional caregivers.
Such was the the inspiration for CarePlus Transportation, a non-emergency transportation service for people with limited mobility.
Founded this year, it provides certified nursing assistants as drivers who will go into a person’s home, if necessary, to pick up an individual and go into the destination point with the client. Assistants can even stay during medical appointments or family functions, Uribe said.
“They were the only one to say they could supply someone to carry my mom up and down the stairs,” said Beth Repoush, who lives in Lake Barrington Shores and cares for her parents, who are in their 80s. “Sometimes, Diego has even done the carrying.”
Differentiating it from other transportation businesses, CarePlus will be charging flat rates, not by the mile or arrival fees. That way, Uribe said, they can keep costs down.
Also, the vehicles will be luxury mini-vans, not sterile handicap-accessible transport vans.
“You can feel like cattle in some of (the buses),” Uribe said. “Ours are more like a limo service than an industrial transportation service.”
To grow the business, Uribe teamed up with co-owner Anne Adams Oakley, who is also involved with Synergy.
“We’ll take them safely from couch to destination and back again,” she said from the company’s Barrington headquarters.
“Safely and in comfort,” Uribe added.
Although young, CarePlus comes with the combined business backgrounds of Uribe and Adams. Uribe was in business operations and development for an international firm before branching out into Synergy HomeCare five years ago. Synergy has more than 100 caregivers and plans to grow by 50 percent this year. Adams was in the nonprofit professional management field.
The two longtime Barrington Breakfast Rotary members said CarePlus isn’t only a business, it’s a service to the community that they have witnessed firsthand. Adams and Uribe said they’ve had family members in need of such services.
“There is nothing more rewarding than to visit one of our clients and they say thank-you,” Uribe said. “It makes it all worth it.”
Adams agreed, saying it is good to match good work with good business.
“It is very rewarding work,” she said. “You see the results of your actions and people are so grateful.”
