Brightstar Care

I am enormously grateful for this company. My mother in law very suddenly needed 24/7 caregivers and we were in a panic trying to find a company to meet her needs. Luckily we chose to use BrightStar. The owners are outstanding. They were calm and understanding in what was a very stressful situation. Even on a Friday night they were available and they were able to quickly schedule caregivers around the clock. All of the caregivers have been competent and compassionate. Our minds are at ease knowing my MIL is being taken care of so well. I 100% would recommend this to anyone that is looking for care for themselves or their loved ones.

I would give one star based on my bad experiences; however, I also had a few aides that are decent, so I feel 2 stars is fair.

Some examples of my experiences with them in the 8 days that we used them:

We called the nurse there and was advised to take my husband to ER on a Sunday night. She advised us to cancel out aide the next day because my husband might be admitted. It turned out that the ER visit was not necessary so we returned home around 4:30am. I called their 24-hour hotline and was told by Patrick that he would contact the scheduler at 7:30am to see if we can get our aide back. When I finally got up in the morning after an exhausting night, I called back and found that Patrick didn't contact the scheduler at all. He only did it after I called and told me that the earliest time that an aide could come was 2:30pm.

My husband's diaper/sheet was saturated with urine in the morning and I am not strong enough to change him. I had to call another agency to get help. They sent someone over in 40-minutes and helped me clean up my husband. That was an extremely unpleasant and stressful experience.

We talked to Brightstar and one of the aides, hoping to have her sign up for more shifts with us. They insisted that it can't be done, but the aide was puzzled because she clearly had the availability.

One aide was sleeping on the job, another one had many issues and I told them that I'd rather take care of my husband myself if she was the only one available.

I emailed a few people at Brightstar (including the scheduler) about changing the hours from 12-hour per day to two 4-hour shifts. A few days later, I got the new schedule, it still showed 12-hour per day.

They claimed that it's hard to get the same aides for the fixed shifts because they all work for different agencies. We had a revolving door of caregivers the first week. The new agency found fixed aides for us in less than 2 days and promised that they'll be the same for the remainder of the time that we still use them (unless any of them are sick or have emergencies - which is reasonable). It CAN be done!

My husband (who is in hospice) is very happy with the new aides and I am relieved that I no longer have the headaches dealing with the issues associated with Brightstar.

Amazing Robert and Kerry have a talented team of professionals that really care about your loved ones well being . We brought In Brightstar because of their flexibility. When we got them we realized we got not only amazing flexibility but true compassion and care. My fathers caregivers have been awesome professionals who truly care and want him to get better

Run, run, run away as fast as you can. I'm giving no stars. Out of all the caregivers there was only 1 that was even remotely caring. Frankly, all these type services are lousy, but this was by far the worst. These places need to realize they are caring for people and not just bodies.

BrightStar Care is a wonderful place to work! The staff in the office are friendly and helpful. I enjoy the wide variety of patients I have been able to see. I have been a nurse almost 40 years and thought I had an excellent knowledge of what is done in the home. They actually participate in Clinical Research for Mayo Clinic which I was able to participate in - I had never done anything like that before. I have also given many injections of medications that were new o me as they provide care for many orphan diseases. So seems like you can teach this "ole gal new tricks." I have totally enjoyed my experience. Also you get paid every week!

We hired night health aides from Brightstar upon the recommendation of Vitas (who were wonderful) to help with my mother while she was in home hospice-because of her condition she needed help to get up frequently at night. As we had been up nights for weeks, we needed a break. Unlike the consistent care we we were told we were going to get, we had a different aide nearly every night, and two of them slept on the job. The night before she passed away she called out for help, and my daughter who was in the next room woke up to help her get to the bathroom, unlike the sleeping aide. I do not recommend this service.

I have been working with BrightStar for almost two years now and I can not put into words how great it is to work with them. The owners are absolutely wonderful. Not only do they go above and beyond for their clients- (one of our owners took a client of ours grocery shopping the other day) but they make sure that their caregivers and nurses are happy and have everything that they need to provide the best care possible to their clients. They make sure that all of the staff know all of the skills to care for clients and they even pay them to train to make sure that even client who are only getting two hours of care have the best two hour care possible. I can say that I love working with BrightStar Care of Fairfax and when they treat their staff the way that they do it makes us work ten times harder and makes us want to provide excellent care to make them proud!

After reading the repsonse from one of the owners, I didn't think I could be more frustrated. I stand corrected. Your response of the caregiver having a medical emergency is so beyond false, as to the reason why there wasn't a caregiver available, I don't know what to say. A week before our regular scheduling of services from Brightstar were to continue after having weeks to replace the previous caregiver, we were told they were unable to provide a caregiver. After much frustration on mine and my mother's part, we were told they had someone who could stand in while they looked for another caregiver. This did not work out, as we were informed three days prior to return of service, their back up person just had a surgery on her foot and was unable to drive. Emergencies happen, life happens, but to have zero caregivers available for any hours, was beyond disbelief. Through all of this, not once was there true ownership on the complete lack of staffing, accountability, or most importantly a compassion for leaving us with out a caregiver.

We have in fact found a new service, who was recommended by Brightstar. We are now with Care With Love. So far their professionalism, compassionate caregiver, and all around buisness practices have been great.

I truly hope you and your staff learn from this and never put another family in this position again. It is a stressful enough process to find a caregiver and caregiving services to entrust a loved one with. My review and the one previously is based soley on the poor business practices of your franchise, to include the territorial issues that happended when we moved from Leesburg to Reston; and not the caregivers to be very clear. Because I do not think it would be fair to give them a bad review, as we didn't experience anything negative with the caregivers.

Rob and Kerry provided comprehensive information upon my first contact with them. They provided not only the 'typical' info that you will get from all companies but also some helpful tips/suggestions regarding questions to ask when talking with and comparing other companies. I subsequently had the in-home meeting with Kerry and Tisha (RN) and proceeded with the the assessment of Mom and discussed the requirements we were looking for in a caregiver. They took the time to explain both business as well as care processes with sincerity and compassion. In addition to the typical care needs, we were looking for a caregiver that met one specific criteria to help with the process of Mom accepting the need/services of a full time caregiver. They found a caregiver who meet ALL of our requirements the first time around - really helped for a smooth beginning and compatability! Thank you Brightstar, we are very happy with the ongoing care giving you are providing for Mom!