For Juan Tuason, President & CEO of Paragon Home Care in McLean, VA, sustainable growth is driven by supporting care teams with the right processes and technology. In the spotlight, Juan reflects on his personal journey caring for his father and highlights how insight and expert guidance can help caregivers adapt in complex dementia moments while preserving dignity and human connection.
While I was still at Fannie Mae, my father was going through some health problems. And it was killing my mom, honestly. She was his primary caregiver. My siblings and I had an intervention and said, okay, mom, you know, we can help. So my dad moved in with us for a few years. I finally found a doctor who believed in holistic medicine, but was an MD. I left work early. I drove 30 minutes to pick up his oxygen tank and get home. And he says, son, my chest hurts. I don’t know if I can go. So I said, all right, let’s call 911, knowing that he would never allow me to take him to the hospital. But he said, yes. That’s when I knew it was serious. He went into a coma that night and died in the hospital 10 days later. The biggest aha is when I walked in and saw caregivers, and it dawned on me that, wow, I could have outsourced that and I could have just been a son. I didn’t have anything left in the gas tank to be a son because I was too busy being a caregiver.
Every Business Needs A Moat
What can help me build a moat around the business? My focus is on the supply side, which is the caregiver side, and how do we maximize our attractiveness as an employer of choice? When I heard about Sensi, what perked my ear about it was, as corny as it sounds or, as probably strange as it sounds compared to what most people are looking at is the proactive way that we can reinforce an awesome job. Sadly, most great caregivers are the people that never get attention because there’s no complaints, there’s no issues, there’s no incidents happening with their clients, and they’re just working silently doing a great job. They never get that regular pat in the back and reinforcement.
Human-Centered Dementia Care With Timely Insights
The most beneficial example we’ve had comes to mind with dementia care, where we hear an agitation incident. But as they say, if you’ve seen one dementia case, you’ve seen one dementia case. There’s not one-size-fits-all, but we were able to connect her Our director of community engagement is also a dementia care practitioner and trainer. This client specifically was the spouse. Both of them have dementia, both husband and wife, but the spouse was the one that was the primary caregiver. And she reluctantly gave up the caregiver role by allowing a caregiver from us to be there. So in a way she felt like she was being fired. Our director just said, do me a favor. Ask her to help you set the table. And of course, my caregiver’s first reaction was, oh, no, they’re paying me money. I can’t ask them to do work like that. I’m supposed to do everything. And sure enough, she said, Mrs. So-and-so, can you help me set the table? And her eyes perked up, big smile, and she ran. And with great pride, she set that table. But she just made that connection that she was doing all of this before you came along, and now we’re here doing everything. Give her some agency so that she can maintain that dignity of being able to help her spouse, which has been her primary job for so many years. Next thing you know, the caregiver’s crying, my director’s in tears, because she just had this aha moment of being able to touch and make a difference for this client. That conversation and that interaction would never have happened unless we had that insight from Sensi to trigger it.
