To Christopher Pankratz, chief executive officer and co-owner of Masters In Home Care, it just makes sense that offering a skilled home health care agency “in the communities where we live and work provides a higher level of customer service and response.”
Master’s in Home Care, which has 83 staffers, won a Hartford Courant 2024 Top Workplaces award in the small business category. This year is the third time the company has won a Top Workplaces award. It has offices in Rocky Hill and North Haven.
One of the goals of the business is to “treat your family like our family. We’re a family-run business with over five decades of experience in the healthcare industry.”
“We embody and try to live up to our mission statement every day,” Pankratz said.
This means, he said, “promoting independence, healing, and comfort through quality and compassion to exceed our patients’ ever-changing home care needs and expectations.
“This provides a positive framework and direction for the entire organization,” Pankratz said. “Our dedication to work-life balance for our team members helps us retain a dedicated and professional team of employees that are engaged with their patients and family members and embrace the company values and make that a priority in their day to day practice.”
About being in the skilled home health care business for five decades, Pankratz said, “the senior leadership at Master’s in Home Care have worked in many different roles and for other home health care companies in our previous work lives.”
“We all have learned from our personal experience and mentors as to what qualities in a workplace we value and what makes an employee feel heard and valued in their job,” he said. “We have taken our combined experiences and implemented the most positive aspects into our current work environment at Masters.”
Pankratz said Masters In Home Care provides a “range of skilled medical services including both skilled nursing and rehabilitation therapies to our patients in the home.”
“Every patient has unique medical needs and requirements, so a customized plan of care is developed in coordination with the patient’s physician and the patient for all services we provide,” he said.
This includes, services provided by registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, physical therapists, physical therapy assistants, occupational therapists, occupational therapy assistants, speech language pathologists, medical social workers, and certified nursing assistants/home health aides, Pankratz said.
“We emphasize cultivating a team of professionals who share the Masters values, dedication to their patients, and maintaining a high quality of professional medical services in the home,” he said. “As such, we provide our employees outstanding benefits along with highly competitive compensation, education assistance programs, retirement planning, and a wonderful work environment.
“Masters treats everyone like equals and emphasizes team collaboration. It is the environment we create and the treatment of our employees that sets us apart as an employer in home health care.”
One staffer who added comments to the Top Workplaces survey noted “MIHC encourages growth as an employee, supports you and encourages you to grow and promotes from within.”
Pankratz said the agency supports “growth through a robust training program including monthly department meetings and frequent training sessions.
“It is standard practice for us to seek to promote from within, and many of our senior leadership and supervisors have been promoted during their tenure with Masters,” he said. “We also take the safety of our workforce seriously, and are constantly looking at new ways of investing in additional safety based initiatives to keep our employees safe in the field. Some of the items we’ve accomplished are instituting a pre-visit safety screen questionnaire, holding mandatory in-person safety workshops, and purchasing and distributing personal safety alarms. As our world and environment evolves we evolve with it.”
Pankratz also noted “our employees matter very much to us and we will continue to strive to maintain Masters as an employer of choice for those medical professionals seeking opportunities in the home health care field.”
“We also celebrate both company and employee milestones and successes. Whether it’s holding baby showers in the offices, recognizing the efforts of the team after an audit, or most recently taking our employees to Mohegan Sun for the evening to mark the 10th anniversary of Masters In Home Care, we truly appreciate our team and we take the time to recognize and celebrate them. “