Local Opens First Las Vegas ComForcare Senior Services

Lisa Wensley’s life changed when she lost her father a year and a half ago. After a long decline, his final days were spent in hospice care. For Wensley, the experience was eye-opening and left her with a new purpose. Grateful for the support she received from the hospice workers and nurses, she decided she would open her own senior services business. An intensive and thorough investigation of all her options led her to ComForcare Senior Services, an international in-home, non-medical care provider to seniors and others in need of assistance.
“The hospice workers and nurses were angels,” she said. “I had been praying about how to make a difference, a significant difference, in people’s lives and I thought if I could be part of that kind of industry that would be something I could feel really good about. This was my opportunity to do that.”
In September, Wensley opened the first ComForcare location in the state of Nevada located at 7477 Lake Mead Blvd., Suite 150 in Las Vegas, serving the entire Las Vegas and Henderson areas.
ComForcare offers home care services to seniors and others on an hourly, daily, weekly or live-in basis. Personal-care services include bathroom assistance, dressing and oral hygiene, recording of vital medical signs, hands-on bathing and more. Companionship services include such things as meal preparation, housekeeping, incidental transportation and grocery shopping. Services are available not only to seniors but also individuals with disabilities, accident victims, new mothers or those recovering from recent illness or surgery.
Wensley’s partners in her ComForcare business include Sandy Wensley, her mother, and Mary deChavez, her life partner. Wensley, who also served a year in the United States Air Force, has a background in the financial services industry, and spent four years as a district leader in charge of expansion for Las Vegas area recruiting, training and sales. Mary had trained to be a convalescent nurse but ended up pursuing a career in human resources. Sandy also has a background in the medical industry, having owned the monthly healthcare newspaper Medical News and worked closely with home healthcare organizations and numerous other healthcare professionals. While Wensley is leading their ComForcare business, she finds comfort and power in the talents of her partners.
“As I started exploring my options in senior care,” she said, “it turned out that everyone around me formed a kind of dream team in which each of us has part of our background that is key to running the business.”
Wensley says she was immediately attracted to ComForcare because of how much genuine interest the company showed in her and her partners when they first inquired about owning a franchise. “So many companies were willing to take us as long as we could write a check,” she explained. “ComForcare checked us out as much as we checked them out, maybe moreso, and I knew that quality would trickle down through their entire process. When we got to day to day operations we found that diligence in selecting us was infused into every aspect of the business. It was very appealing.”
Wensley also found that ComForcare had exceptionally high standards of choosing caregivers and oversight in the first 72 hours of care. “We knew we could deliver the type of quality care we wanted to deliver,” she said. Wensley and her partners also conducted their own extensive research on the company and talked to owners all over the country to see what they thought. “By far, ComForcare was the best operating and highest quality, and had the most thorough hiring process for caregivers,” she said. “That translates into absolute quality assistance and care for our clients and that’s how you build a long-term good business.”
The bureaucratic processes of the state of Nevada put a few kinks in the work, but Wensley found that ComForcare was immensely helpful in dealing with that as well. “There were challenges in time and detail, but they had all of the available resources from legal advice to marketing advice and beyond to get you up and running. They made a complicated process as easy as it could be.”
That support is important because Wensley has significant competition in her area. “It turns out,” she explained, “that our particular territory rivals parts of Florida in terms of seniors per capita. There is a huge need for a service like ours in this community, and we plan to be here for the long haul.”
According to AARP, Nevada is expected to have a 264 percent increase in its 65 and over population between 2000 and 2030. This is the highest growth rate of older adults in the nation. Due to this increasing demand, ComForcare is aggressively targeting Nevada for growth and expects to add six locations in the state within the next two years, specifically targeting areas such as Las Vegas, Henderson and Reno.
Wensley, her mother and her life partner look forward to serving their community for many years to come and, hopefully, providing the same kind of comfort and companionship to others that they received at the end of her father’s life. “What I want to do more than anything else,” she said, “is honor the memory of my father through my work and my ComForcare business.”
Founded in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., ComForcare Senior Services has 145 franchise owners operating 165 territories in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. ComForcare plans to add approximately 40 new locations in 2014.