Two years after coming together to meet an unmet need in Lawrence County, four nurses have been recognized for their home health care business.

Lee Ann Bower, Shelia Salisbury, Tami VanBibber and Julie Adkins started Blessed at Home when Lawrence County was in need of more home health care providers. Since November 2008, Blessed at Home has helped nearly 400 patients in the area receive home care, and last week the agency was designated as being in the top 25 percent of home health care providers in the nation by HomeCare Elite.

Bower, Salisbury, VanBibber and Adkins all agreed that the honor is quite an accomplishment for an agency as young as Blessed at Home.

“It’s pretty outstanding since we’re only two years old,” Salisbury said of the distinction. HomeCare Elite looks at every home health care agency in the nation, from hospital-based to freestanding independent business like Blessed at Home.

The annual report by HomeCare Elite looks at overall patient satisfaction, quality of care, quality improvement and financial performance. The report also takes into consideration the outcome of patients from the time they are admitted into home care to the time of discharge.

“Outcomes are publicly reported,” Salisbury said. “Anyone can go online at any time and check and do comparisons for home care agencies. Our patients did show tremendous improvement overall.”

Honors and distinctions are not the reasons why the four founded Blessed at Home, however.

Bower said they founded the company based on a Christian perspective, meeting not only patients’ physical needs, but ministering to their patients spiritually as well.

“Our tag line is ‘Delivering Christ-centered care to you home.’ We wanted to have the flexibility to be able to pray with our patients,” Bower said.

“It’s something we were prohibited to do at other places we worked,” VanBibber added.

The company also tithes 10 percent of its revenue to local charities, Christian education and Africa medical care.

The honor is something that the group of women said they celebrate with their staff of eight other nurses and home health aides.

“It feels good but we always strive to do better,” said VanBibber. “We celebrate it then we move on.”