For 110 years, Circle Home has brought professional and compassionate home health care to people of all ages throughout Greater Lowell, Greater Lawrence and southern New Hampshire. We are a non-profit, home health care agency, with a private duty division (Commonwealth Nursing Services) as well. Our team is "on the road" every day - nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech therapists, medical social workers and aides - bringing care and compassion right to each patient's home, sharing in their struggles and successes as they recover and cope. We've cared for hundreds of thousands of people, and generations of families, from all walks of life, of all ages, in every neighborhood, circumstance and level of health.
We care for over 5,000 patients each year - infants through elders - making over 70,000 home visits. We care for those who are expected to fully recover from an illness or injury; those who are learning to manage a lifelong chronic disease; and those who have advanced/complex illness.
We were founded in Lowell in 1909 in response to the City's high infant mortality rate and work injuries in the textile mills, by the visionary women of the Lowell Guild and the Middlesex Women's Club. We began with two nurses, who walked throughout Lowell to bring treatment and teaching to families struggling with disease or injury, and to new mothers. In addition to caring for the sick and injured, we provided well baby clinics and new mothers' clubs, milk stations to distribute uncontaminated milk for children, and immunization clinics as new vaccines were developed. We were credited with lowering the City's infant mortality rate, and with increasing the health knowledge of families struggling with low income and overcrowded housing.
Through the years, our service area was broadened to Greater Lowell, Greater Lawrence and southern New Hampshire. Rehabilitation therapists, social workers and home health aides joined nurses as members of the clinical team. We have been providing care through events that changed local, national, world and medical history, such as disasters, epidemics, the arrival of successive waves of immigrants, the Depression years, world wars and returning veterans, the creation of Medicare and Medicaid, growth of health insurance companies, the advancements of technology and the many changes in health care knowledge and treatment over the last century.
In the beginning we were known as the Lowell Guild; then as the Lowell Visiting Nurse Association, and most recently, the Visiting Nurse Association of Greater Lowell. We became "Circle Home" in 2014. We continue our commitment to improving community health by caring for patients in the context of their daily lives, by teaching and empowering patients toward self-care, and by providing dignity and comfort for those with complex illnesses.
Today, we're part of the Wellforce family of home care agencies, led by Home Health Foundation and including Hallmark Health VNA & Hospice. Together, we're "Proudly Wellforce!"