A local leader in home health care is being recognized with a Founder’s Sprit Award for excellence in fighting for cost effective, community-based care.
Annette Horvath, a Country Club resident and the administrator of Bronxwood Homecare at 1468 Williamsbridge Road, is the 2011 recipient of the New York State Association of Health Care Provider’s Founder Spirit Award.
HCP, a trade organization for community and home-based care agencies, gives its Founders Spirit Award every year to a person in the industry who demonstrates strong and successful efforts to promote awareness and appreciation of home and community-based health services.
“I would still do this without the recognition, but I am still very excited to be receiving this award,” Horvath said. “Even if I wasn’t receiving the award, it would not change what I do because I really believe that the community and the home is where health care should be provided. It is the best place, the most cost effective place, and I truly believe that this is where the people want to receive care.”
Horvath said she believes that she received the Founder’s Spirit Award because she is a frequent speaker about the need to have community-based alternatives to institutional settings like hospitals and nursing homes. The care is highly personalized, she said.
“When I started my nursing career, my mother said to always remember to treat you patients as if they were your mother or father,” Horvath said. “As I have progressed in my career, I felt that it was important to treat people not like record numbers or place holders, but as individuals.”
The benefit of having care provided in one’s home leads to more successful outcomes because patients respond better when family and friends are nearby, Horvath said.
Horvath has spend 20 years working in community and home-based care, and started at Bronxwood in July 2008. She is responsible for maintaining regulatory compliance, making sure that the staff is properly developed, and negotiates contracts with outside agencies to make sure that the health care needs of the community are met.
She also frequently visits legislators in their district offices and Albany to advocate for positions favorable to community and home-based care, Horvath said.
Horvath has been responsible for the creation of two new programs during her time at Bronxwood, including an approved program for the treatments of patients suffering from traumatic brain injury, as well as program that allows patients who are entitled to care in a nursing home to instead receive that care in the comfort of their own homes through a waiver.
