BrightStar Care – Central / N Westchester Co., NY

When my father returned from a month-long stay in the hospital/physical rehab, my family chose BrightStar to provide a home health aide.  James, the owner, listened carefully as I described my father and his needs and was able to find the perfect fit for Dad.  Dora was a tremendous help to Dad and gave my family peace of mind as he acclimated back to his life at the assisted living facility.  Dora was professional, good-humored and very skilled at her job.  She helped to make Dad’s transition back home a positive experience.

It may not seem so from what what follows here, but I just don’t have enough words to describe the spectacular care and service our family received from Brightstar Care.

I recently engaged them to help my 84 year old Mom, who is in assisted living, fading physically and mentally, and quarantined away from our family during COVID.

Victorine, the 24 hour aide from Brightstar, cared for my Mom as if she were her own. And — how do I say this without italics and underlining — volunteered to stay with my Mom, in her room, 24/7 even AFTER my Mom tested COVID positive (and even family were not allowed in to visit her). Unbelievable.

And V’s supervisor, Annmarie S., an RN, is as good at her job as I have ever seen anyone be at any job. A force of nature, Annmarie swooped in from day 1, made sure we had everything we needed, and stayed personally involved every single day (including regular reports to me at all hours) in ensuring my Mom was well cared for.

When Brightstar showed up my mom was, despite the assisted living facility doing all they could do for her, in very bad shape, under nourished and dehydrated, and uncooperative in her own care. Annmarie saw that situation to be as dire as it was. She dived right in and — I’m not exaggerating— I dont think my mom would be here today without V and Annmarie going into high gear at the outset and the day to day excellent care Brightstar gave my mom and our family.

If you have a family member who needs this type of assistance, I can’t recommend Brightstar highly enough. This is what nursing care should be; skilled, high energy and compassionate. And in the worst of times for our family, they have been the best there is.

Brightstar has quality HHA aides that really care and are compassionate about their clients.I would highly recommend their services.

Feel free to ignore the 5 star review from Mr. Merchant, he owns the franchise. Bottom line, be careful engaging any agency to provide aide for a loved one. I started working with BrightStar in September of 2017, and was with them through Mid July 2018. It was, at best, ok. My experience was plagued by aides who were constantly changing their schedules and the office letting me know last minute. There were never alternates available if the assigned aide could not make it in, we were never able to establish any consistency with them. Little background; my father is 82 and is suffering from a terrible neuro motor disease. He lives in a nice assisted living facility, but as his range of motion continued to degrade, we opted to get some extra help, someone to be with him in his studio 4 or 5 days a week, from lunch to dinner hours just to help him with simple things, and also to help the staff aides to transfer him from bed to chair, chair to wheelchair etc. We probably went through 5 or 6 people with BrightStar, often with long gaps in coverage as they often had difficulty finding back up help when the scheduled aide would bail. The worst part of the story is that their billing is terrible. They were automatically deducting their fees ($700 or more per WEEK) from my dads debit card, and sending me a copy of the paid invoice. recently, I caught them outright charging us for a day where the aide DID NOT WORK! When I questioned them by email, they confirmed that she DID work, until they called her, and she said she was NOT there that day. My faith had now been rattled. If that could happen once, how many other hours or days was I erroneously charged? I wrote the managers. By my estimate, they had helped themselves to about $35,000 from that debit card since Sep 17. I respectfully suggested they consider a partial refund, any financial gesture, to assuage my concerns. almost 2 weeks later, after no reply, I asked for a response. I was told that they were still reviewing their records, matching all time sheet with invoices, and that it would take more time. Almost 3 weeks later I had still not heard back. I emailed again, and in addition to my disgust as to how long they were taking to respond, made clear my disappointment that the owner, Mr. Merchant, had not gotten involved. How could this not have escalated to ownership? He finally emailed me and said he would have an answer for me by the end of last week. He actually did get back to me on schedule. He told me that after review, all of their time sheets match up to invoices, except for the obvious one mentioned previously. He said they would refund me for that day, but offered nothing more. Now, other than the first few weeks, I was never asked to sign any time sheets, nor was my father. Unless an aide is checking in from a mobile device or app that is GPS enabled, all they are relying on is a piece of paper submitted by the aide, filled in by hand and verified by no one! Bottom line, I would like to believe that BrightStar, and companies like it, do have good intentions in so far as we are trusting them to provide people to give compassionate care to our loved ones. I also realize however that at the end of the day, they are businesses. Unfortunately, while the women I liaised with there all seem nice, and were always apologetic about the problems I was having, they were really not able to do anything about it. I do not blame them, but I do blame Mr. Merchant, I don’t trust him or his motives for going in to this business. I think he’s a lousy businessperson, and in his field, maybe that says a lot about his character. He doesn’t care about people, he cares about getting paid. Proceed with caution with this company, or any of the others that provide these services. Its a big industry, and getting bigger every day. Whoever you engage, stay on top of them. That said, I would not suggest you work with this BrightStar franchise

Great team of professionals who truly care for our seniors and do right for them