Valerie Millerick

In 1991, Valerie Millerick left her position at Hemostat to launch Renal Care Registered Nursing Services.Her Nanuet, New York-based company now provides acute mobile dialysis and therapeutic plasma exchange services to many of the hospitals in the metro New York area.Valerie - along with her son, James DeMaria, who serves as Vice President of Operations - has grown Renal Care into the Northeast leader in acute mobile Hemodialysis.

VALERIE MILLERICK, President, RN, CNN

VALERIE MILLERICK

Valerie Millerick grew up in Yonkers, New York and is a graduate of Yonkers High School. Encouraged by her father, she enrolled in nursing school at Misericordia in the Bronx (now known as Our Lady of Mercy), where she graduated with honors to become a Registered Nurse.

Throughout the 70's, Millerick worked at St. Francis Hospital in Miami Beach, Florida, on the medical/surgical floor. While at St. Francis, Valerie underwent training in the hospitals newly formed dialysis ward. Hemodialysis was still in its infancy at the time and Valerie was excited to be part of this new life-saving therapy.

Valerie returned to New York in 1982 to become the head nurse of the Adolescent Dialysis Unit at St. Joseph's Medical Center in Yonkers. It was during this period that Millerick was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. Determined not to leave the profession she had come to love, Valerie left St. Joseph to become Director of Nursing for Hemostat, a California-based company that provided mobile dialysis services. By leaving behind the stress of daily floor shifts to work one-on-one with her patients, Valerie was successfully able to extend the life of her career.

In 1991, Valerie left Hemostat to launch Renal Care Registered Nursing Services. Her Nanuet, New York-based company now provides acute mobile dialysis and therapeutic plasma exchange services to many of the hospitals in the Metro New York area. With her son, Jim DeMaria, who serves as Vice President of Operations, Valerie has grown Renal Care into the Northeast's leading provider of hemodialysis services.

Founded in 1991 by Valerie Millerick, a 30-year nursing veteran, Renal Care has filled a much-needed niche in supplemental hospital care giving. They currently provide dialysis services to 11 hospitals in New York City, Westchester County, and Upstate New York including Hudson Valley Hospital Center, in Cortalndt Manor, Columbian Presbyterian Hospital, in Manhattan, and Benedictine Hospital, in Kingston, New York.

The company is now negotiating more contracts with several other hospitals throughout the region. In addition to kidney dialysis, Renal Care also provides plasmapheresis therapy for patients suffering from myasthenia gravis, thrombolytic thrombocytopenia purpura/hemolytic uremic syndrome, Guillain-Barré syndrome, and other autoimmune conditions.

"At Renal Care, we offer nurses a challenging alternative to the daily grind," says Valerie Millerick, Renal Care's president. Millerick cited a study released in the Journal of the American Medical Association in October 2002, where nurses reported greater job dissatisfaction and emotional exhaustion when they were responsible for more patients than they can safely care for. "Renal Care plays a vital role in reducing the problem of high nurse-to-patient ratios. We're sensitive to the hurdles nurses face today and feel we offer some real advantages to working traditional floor shifts," adds Millerick.