Spectrum Health Care

Spectrum Health Care offers innovative solutions through a broad range of services.

With a wide range of home health care services including nursing, personal and home support, foot care and corporate wellness clinics, Spectrum Health Care has used its passion for health care diversification to become one of Ontario’s leading home health care providers. A privately owned Canadian corporation, it is fully accredited by Accreditation Canada and offers its services to long term care facilities, corporations, schools and healthcare institutions.
Despite the numerous Ontario locations and wide range of personal support services that it currently offers, Spectrum Health Care began in 1977 as a franchise out of the United States that acted strictly as a supplemental staffing agency.

“I arrived in 1981 as director of health care services and saw a future in the homecare space,” said Lori Lord, current CEO of Spectrum Health Care.

After Lord took over as director, Spectrum Health Care began to promote in its homecare agencies. At the time, some of its agencies were in nursing, some non-profit and some for-profit, but the focus was on non-profit.

“That was a real turning point for Spectrum Health Care. We were now in the business of providing homecare as well as staffing in hospitals and nursing homes.”

Business received a push in 1997 when the Conservative government set up a brokerage model that utilized Community Care Access Centres (CCACs). “They were responsible for putting up request for proposals (RFPs) for all the services that were going into people’s homes, so this was another turning point for Spectrum Health Care because we started to react to the RFPs and we won.”

“We were very successful at the RFP process and we were very successful at actually delivering the service after we had won.”

Although the Conservatives eventually stopped the RFP process, Spectrum Health Care has continued to ride the growth and benefit that it received from them.

“We have grown from the original RFPs into a demographic that is supported by the government through more and more funding every year,” said Lord. “Over the period of about 6 to 7 years we became an 80% home care company and now a 20% staffing company. We grew rapidly over the course of 6 to 8 years.”

After becoming the CEO of the company 5 years ago, Lord broke with her former CFO due to conflicts in vision and found a new partner to help her on the journey towards diversification of the company.

“We wanted to diversify into more services and get into a total client care model,” said Lord. “Two years ago we bought a company called Seniors for Seniors. It’s a private company, all private pay, that offers softer services such as living, overnight cooking, shopping and companionship.”

Approximately one year ago, Spectrum Health Care bought a non-urgent patient transfer business that they renamed Spectrum Patient Services. “We are now able to pick up clients, both wheelchair bound and stretcher bound, and take them to appointments; we have big contracts with the hospitals”

Spectrum Health Care has offices in Toronto and Mississauga and delivers their nursing, personal support and physiotherapy services to local residents. For their Seniors for Seniors branch they have offices in Hamilton, Waterloo, Kitchener, Toronto, Barrie, and will soon be opening one in Ottawa. For Spectrum Patient Transfer they transfer from Ottawa right through to Niagara Falls.

When questioned about her vision for the company, Lord said that it wasn’t always so crystal clear, rather something that grew over time.

“It was a new vision; I wanted to diversify the services and become a total client care approach,” she said. “This diversification has never happened in our sector. We’re transforming healthcare into being that one-stop shop.”

Patricia Sbrocchi, Director of Operations at Spectrum Health Care, believes that this diversification is what makes them stand out and drives their success.

“It’s really looking at putting that thread through the patient experience of health care,” she said. “The whole focus is really on trying to keep patients in their home and what services are required to be able to do that.”

When deciding on the best staff for these services, Spectrum Health Care always ensures that the caregiver assigned to each client is the right match through rigorous screening to ensure that the needs of the client match the skillset of the employee. On top of the standard interview and reference-check, each employee is bonded, insured and required to attend a comprehensive orientation.

With the integration of the aforementioned Seniors for Seniors and Spectrum Patient Care into their business model, the versatility of Spectrum Health Care’s reach creates a broad demographic.

“We have a population size that works around the acute type of services, patients being discharged from the hospital after surgical procedures, but also a fairly extensive senior population as well,” said Sbrocchi.

Given the diverse nature of the clients and their needs, Spectrum Health Care makes sure that they have lines open to effectively support and give them a voice.

“One of the most important partnerships is through our association with the Ontario Home Care Association. That’s where we work with all of our competitors to inform and advocate for our clients with the government,” said Lord.

When questioned about their future plans and goals for the company, both Sbrocchi and Lord were clear in their desire to continue to improve and develop the wide range of services that Spectrum Health Care offers.

“Our new technologies and continued expansion to grow not only in the homecare sector, but in the other division lines that we’ve been able to purchase,” said Sbrocchi. “We’re always looking for new opportunities and expansion geographically as well.”

“Just keep moving forward,” said Lord. “My goal is to increase the value of the company, which we are doing each and every day. Keep giving high-quality services to our clients and making sure that we’re making improvements where we need to make improvements.”