My finance view

Carolynn Ingerson Hoffman says she knew even as a little girl that she wanted to become a nurse and help sick people get better.

She says she also gained a strong work ethic from her father, who held two or three jobs at a time to earn enough to support a family of six girls and a boy in north St. Louis County.

Hoffman didn’t let a lack of money for education and partial deafness stemming from illnesses get in her way while pursuing her goal of a nursing degree. She got a scholarship and studied hard. Compounding the difficulty was that she was a divorced mother with a young son.

Then, after working as a registered nurse for several years, she pursued a new dream: a business to provide nursing services throughout the St. Louis area.

Her business, now called MediNurse Inc., marks its 25th anniversary this year. The business, originally named CompreHealth Inc., employs more than 100 full- and part-time workers and provides a wide range of nursing services for hospitals, businesses, organizations and individuals.

I understand that you overcame great personal difficulties to get to where you are in life. What is your best advice for others who similarly face great odds?

I guess I would say that growing up in a large family when I did had its challenges, certainly monetarily. I could also take you through the ’60s and ’70s and tell you what it was like at the time being a divorced mother who had to work.

Now, that was a challenge — just getting housing and credit were challenges. I’d like to think, and I do know, that it was because of women like me who opened doors — or crashed through them — that many women today have been able to move forward and upward. We fought the battles so that they could win the war.

My best advice for anyone is to just keep going. Don’t give up, find a way around every obstacle and find the opportunity in every challenge. You have to take control and make things happen — things you want to happen.

How has your hearing loss affected the way you’ve operated your business?

It has affected my career greatly. In the beginning, I was treated with kid gloves — kind of pitied. That surprised me, because I was elated I could even hear! I didn’t consider wearing hearing aids a handicap but rather blessings.

But because everybody seemed to be so sympathetic, I decided to use it to my best advantage in business. I could always get the best seat in a conference room and could say "excuse me" when I needed to think for a moment. I never hid the fact that I was hearing impaired.

I do need the best seating possible to hear. I do have trouble distinguishing words. Now I have to take a second person on marketing calls just to make sure I’m hearing correctly.

The need for nursing services seems to be ever increasing. Did you foresee that trend when you started your business?

In this business and others you have to pay attention to the trends and stay one step ahead of them. We’ve been through shortages, we’ve been through periods of oversupply. Now we’re looking at a national shortage of nurses unlike all others.

It was perfectly predictable. The largest block of nurses, the baby boomers, are retiring. There aren’t enough qualified faculty available in order to admit more nursing students. Nurses have so many more opportunities today other than actual bedside nursing. Add it all up and it spells shortage.

Would the legislation being considered in Congress do enough to address the nation’s health care crisis and bring affordable care to more people?

I haven’t read the Senate bill. I did, however, read the House bill — every page of it — and was appalled. …

Do I think what we are doing is good for health care and this country? No, I do not.

It seems to me we could have purchased insurance for everyone who didn’t have it, pay the premiums each year and it would have been less than this, and the majority would still have their insurance.

What could we do to make health care more affordable? Let us buy the insurance that meets our needs from any state.

Tort reform also is needed. Physicians practice too much defensive litigation to the extent that it impacts every aspect of health care. Simply put, they’re concerned they will be sued.

I have great concerns about what is happening in Washington. I’ve become a political activist at 64!

Even as your business has grown and thrived, do you wish you had done anything differently along the way?

Yes. I was going to franchise and, in fact, had a check for $50,000 in my hand to take to the lawyers to get started. It was the day the stock market crashed (in 1987). I canceled the appointment, which was the right decision at the time. However, I should have done the franchising when conditions were favorable again.

I try not to look back and second-guess myself. I have always been guided by a strong work ethic and commitment to doing what is right, while maintaining a good profit margin. I got these traits from my father.

We have been number one in size, visibility and profitability. I really don’t have the need to do that again.

Don’t get me wrong — I am very committed to being successful. However, being successful means to me helping others as well as guiding my company into the future.

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