Innovative, Locally Owned Caregiving Agency Teams Up to Produce and Distribute Personal Protective Equipment (Face Masks) to Essential Service Providers

PR Newswire

KNOXVILLE, Tenn., April 23, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Certain industries and businesses have been designated as essential services during the battle with the Coronavirus/Covid-19 during this current pandemic. The individuals providing these essential services need to be and feel safe to do their job effectively. Personal Protective Equipment is part of the solution and is currently in short supply.

Your Home Team Care, an innovative locally owned caregiving agency founded by John R. Staley, Jr. M.D., recognized this need and has taken several steps to alleviate this challenge by making an investment in time and treasure to secure as well as distribute Personal Protective Equipment to these essential service providers.

First of all, one of our employees, Sonya Gunther has led an ongoing effort to make a number of cloth face masks. Two, we have been able to source some N-95 face masks. Three, Your Home Team Care has partnered with Cynical Optimist (Local IT Company) in offering their assistance in producing Personal Protective Equipment during this crisis via 3D printing technology.

Dr. Staley, a career ER Physician, recognizes the importance of Personal Protective Equipment and their impact on healthcare providers, essential first line workers and the general population during this Coronavirus/Covid-19 outbreak.

Your Home Team Care began distributing these respirators and face masks to industries and businesses designated as essential services on April 14^th. Our first donations occurred at the Roane County Sherriff's Department and Roane County Medical Center. Our efforts are continuing with deliveries of respirators, as well as the cloth and medical grade masks (Personal Protective Equipment) to Covenant Park West, Covenant Fort Sanders and U.T. Medical Center hospitals on April 15^th.

For more information about our community outreach and support efforts as well as about Your Home Team Care please contact us.

Contact: Alex Atkinson, Marketing Director

Phone: (865) 332-5000

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.YourHomeTeamCare.com

Your Home Team Care is a local physician owned and RN managed caregiving organization providing sitters and caregivers to clients in their homes, assisted living facilities and in hospitals in the Knoxville and surrounding areas. Our sitters and caregivers have advanced training in compassion and dementia care and provide personalized home care including companionship, light housekeeping, errands, grocery shopping and meal preparation. In addition to these, Your Home Team Care can provide several value-added solutions that improve the health and wellbeing of our clients including a Physician Consultation line, a RN Advice Line, a Nutritionist Advice Line and In-Home Safety Cameras. Your Home Team Care's Mission is to be value-added solution by constantly adapting, evolving, and innovating our business model to better support and meet the needs of our clients and partners.

Addendum

The PPE are produced using a Swedish company's innovation to create face shields whose design will accept any fabric filtration medium that can be replaced after every use. These face shields can act as a respirator for the essential services workers.

Stemming from the idea of 3DVerkstan, a Swedish company's innovation to create face shields using transparency papers and a hole punch on a printed halo, Your Home Team Care followed suit. The respirators are a collaborative industry design that will accept any fabric filtration medium.

According to Brett Human of Cynical Optimist Information Technology,

"Ideally, we are trying to make these respirators out of copper-infused, microbe killing plastics and N95 certified plastics, but what we have on-hand are the standard PLA ("biodegradable" normal plastic) and PETG (basically recycled water bottles) that can both be sanitized for reuse by soaking them in a bleach/water solution" (Bret Human, Cynical Optimist Information Technology/YHTC).

We are currently operating a small 3D printer and are running it at max capacity - 24/7 in our efforts to help our community.