HealthKeeperz Launches Barnabas Caring Team

By Tim Brooks

When my father launched our company more than 50 years ago as a community pharmacy in Pembroke, he poured his soul into his work, and the care that he gave the citizens of Pembroke and surrounding communities spoke to his abiding faith in God and the good of his people.

As we’ve become a larger company through the years, it’s been important to me and others on our leadership team that we take that same ethos of care and apply it not just the communities we serve across North Carolina, but to our own teammates as well. Providing first-class, home-based health care and hospice services is some of the most spiritually fulfilling work humans can do for each other, and it’s also some of the most physically, mentally, and emotionally draining work as well.

HealthKeeperz team members give 100 percent of themselves to their patients, and we now need to give our best to each other. Since our mission is caring for all people for the glory of God, we need to include our own people in the definition of all. Thus, care for HealthKeeperz team members is a natural outflow of our mission.

Since we believe that caring for our team members is a high priority for the expanded HealthKeeperz, we have started a Barnabas Caring Team—named after our Barnabas Culture that honors employee selflessness, caring, humility, and encouragement—to more effectively care for each other.

The newly-created Barnabas Caring Team has a simple mission itself: to identify needs among employees and address them effectively.  The Barnabas Caring Team implements caring activities, such as managing emergency assistance and home repair funds, marriage retreats, local disaster relief, prayers for a team member, and much more.

The goal of the Barnabas Caring Team is to identify physical, emotional, and spiritual needs that employees, their families, and their neighbors--the community—may have.  To guide the work of our Barnabas Caring Team, we use the caring matrix pictured.

As with any other aspect of our business, we believe we can have the highest impact with our Barnabas Caring Team efforts by measuring that impact and effectiveness, so that we continue to maximize the human benefit of our resources. The Barnabas Caring Team is comprised of nine members of the HealthKeeperz team, one person representing each of the organization’s benefits.  

Special thanks to our consulting firm, His Way at Work, for guiding us through the process of developing our Barnabas Caring Team.

Many of you in the community reach out to me to thank me and give me great feedback on the care that members of our team have delivered to you personally, or your friends and family members. I know that all of you are deeply invested in the well-being of those who give so much to you during the course of providing your medical care or seeing your family through end-of-life situations with grace and dignity. It’s my pledge to you to keep you updated on both our efforts and the impact of the Barnabas Caring Team in the lives of our beloved team members at HealthKeeperz.

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