Delivering Care

By LESLIE EARNEST

May 6, 1998 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

When her tire went flat as she drove her aging Plymouth to work before dawn, Susan Micale thought she might miss her hospital shift, a troubling prospect for a nurse in the newborn intensive care unit.

So she called ProCare One, the agency that got her the temporary job. But instead of assigning another nurse, a ProCare employee hustled out and changed Micale’s tire.

“I couldn’t believe it,” the Laguna Beach resident said. Micale is just one of the ProCare One nurses who praise the Santa Ana-based company, which helps fill nursing shifts for more than 190 hospitals and clinics.

ProCare’s attention to the personal side makes the difference, the nurses say. Running short on cash? ProCare may advance a paycheck. Baby-sitter doesn’t show? The company may help find another. Car won’t start? ProCare has been known to send a taxi.

And in a sharp departure for a temporary agency, the company funds a retirement plan for its full-time workers.

“I just treat them the way I want to be treated,” founder Laurie MacEachern said. “It’s a real simple philosophy.”

A powerhouse of empathy, MacEachern, 43, launched the business from her studio apartment 10 years ago with $7,000 in savings. As a nurse and single mother, she was familiar with her employees’ struggles.

“All the odds were against me,” the Laguna Hills resident said.

Today, her strategy is paying dividends. ProCare One employs hundreds of nurses. In addition to its main office in Santa Ana, ProCare has opened branches in Texas and Michigan. This year, the company’s revenue could hit $8 million, she said, which would be almost a 27% jump from last year.

Later this month, ProCare will receive the corporate leadership award from the Women’s Opportunities Center at UC Irvine Extension for recognizing women’s talents and encouraging them.

In a fiercely competitive job market, experts say more companies have begun helping employees with personal matters, from buying groceries to resolving family problems.

“Employers are doing whatever they can to retain especially talented, skilled employees,” said Jill Landauer, a spokeswoman for the WFD Inc. consulting firm in Boston. “More and more employers are providing those concierge services . . . depending on how competitive the businesses are.”

And industry insiders say highly skilled nurses, ProCare’s specialty, are particularly in demand. With the need for nurses rising as enrollment in four-year nursing programs declines, many nurses are now tackling multiple jobs, working for both a hospital and a temporary employment agency, such as ProCare.

Generally, agencies provide “crisis staffing” for hospitals, dispersing nurses when a rash of women go into labor or when a flu bug fills hospital beds while wiping out the full-time staff.

“Around Christmastime when we had the flu season . . . every day we were calling five and six registries to try to get somebody because our whole staff was sick,” said Kay McGinty, director of maternal-child health for Coastal Communities Hospital in Santa Ana.

Despite the demand, however, some nurses say they have felt unappreciated in the past and were pleasantly surprised by MacEachern’s approach to management.

“Now we’re just service providers, like waitresses, basically,” said Laura Townsend-Austin, 46, a Mission Viejo resident who managed nurses for a hospital before coming to work for MacEachern. “Laurie just treats everyone so special. It’s really different.”

ProCare nurses say MacEachern pays them well--$371 to $406 for 12-hour shifts. In addition, the company fully funds a retirement plan for the approximately 60 nurses who work full time for the agency.

Beyond that, if a hospital praises their work, the nurses can expect a bonus or a restaurant gift certificate, MacEachern said.

Nurse Pearl Staggie was so satisfied with the agency that she used to fly regularly from Idaho to California to work hospital shifts lined up by ProCare. She has since become a company administrator.

“It was worth traveling,” said Staggie, 51, who now runs the Arlington, Texas, branch. “It was a good living for me.”

It was 1987 when MacEachern began thinking seriously about starting an agency for nurses. She recalls one particularly nightmarish shift she worked in a hospital delivery room when five women went into labor. A temporary nurse who had recently emerged from retirement was summoned to help out, MacEachern said.

“She said, ‘The last time I worked labor and delivery was 20 years ago and they didn’t have fetal monitors,’ ” MacEachern recounted. “It was a disaster that night.”

So she set about building a business that would specialize in perinatal and pediatric nurses, which today comprise about 75% of the nurses in ProCare’s database.

During her first few months in business, MacEachern essentially was the only nurse on duty, placing herself on call round-the-clock. A baby-sitter helped out with administrative chores.

Soon she began enlisting her nursing friends to help fill hospital shifts. “The thing just caught on, word of mouth. I just kept getting more and more nurses.”

Within 18 months, dozens of nurses were working for ProCare.

“People used to come to my apartment and sign up,” she said. Once, when she couldn’t get the apartment complex gate open, a nurse actually scaled the fence to sign up.

As the business grew, MacEachern opened a small office in Fountain Valley. As time went on, she moved into increasingly larger offices.

Meanwhile, MacEachern’s mother, father and sister moved to California from their hometown in Pontiac, Mich., to help the family’s budding entrepreneur.

She borrowed money only once--$20,000 from a friend--to meet a payroll after her $7,000 savings ran out, MacEachern said.

MacEachern said she now takes a salary of about $150,000 a year. ProCare’s net profit last year was a skimpy $20,000, she said.

“We put all that money in the pension fund,” she said, not sounding the least bit regretful. “So it didn’t leave that much profit.”

Today, MacEachern shares a Laguna Hills home with her son, Steve, 19; daughter, Karly, 6; and three dogs, a cat, a rabbit, a goose, a horse and a pony.

When the stress mounts, she goes horseback riding with her daughter. She used to take her cell phone with her, but she has learned to leave it behind.

Her maze-like, 3,000-square-foot Santa Ana office is staffed by friends and family. Her sister is vice president and office administrator. Her mom handles staffing. When her dad died five months ago, her son took over the books. Two sisters run the Michigan office.

If the business has become a family affair, ProCare nurses say they feel they’re part of the clan.

“They’re like family to me now,” nurse Susan Micale said. “I can’t imagine working anyplace else.”

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ProCare One Profile

Business: Temporary nursing help

President/CEO: Laurie MacEachern

Incorporated: January 1991

Headquarters: Santa Ana

Branch offices: Arlington, Texas; Farmington Hills, Mich.

Employees in three offices: 18

Hospital/clinic clients: 190+

CALIFORNIA NURSES