After moving to Texas in the late 1970s, Anita Porco got a job with a medical staffing agency. Impressed with her business acumen, the owner asked her to sign the payroll checks for the agency’s temporary workers. Flattered, she agreed. Only a few months later, the company closed its doors abruptly and the owner skipped town. Payroll checks with her signature on them were bouncing all over the city. “I was devastated,” Porco recalls. “I felt I had been duped - and I had to explain that to all the workers who held me to blame.”

Embarrassed by the incident, Porco resolved to learn more about the business world - by running her own agency. Nurses Today, the agency she launched in Dallas in 1982, is one of the most successful temporary medical staffing agencies in the state, providing nurses for home health care and temporary staffing needs at hospitals, clinics, doctors’ offices and other facilities. In an intensely competitive environment, Porco’s agency has thrived. With annual revenue of about $1 million expected in 2007, Porco’s company today employs five full-time and about 50 part-time workers.

“For many years, I was reluctant to talk about what had happened to me,” Porco recalls. “Over time, I came to realize that it is not only your successes that define you as an individual, but also your failures and how you handle them.” Now, Porco says, she will discuss the incident in speeches with women’s business groups, in part because she thinks it is important for other women to realize that mistakes don’t have to be fatal to your entrepreneurial ambitions. Porco’s father was an important influence on her life.

An immigrant who came from Italy at the age of 15, unable to speak a word of English, he worked initially in a coal mine before launching his own successful business. From him, Porco says, she learned the importance of hard work and perseverance. Later, during the difficult period after her employer duped her into signing fraudulent checks, her lawyer proved to be an important mentor, she notes. He convinced her that she was capable of starting her own staffing company and he offered some sage advice about business. “He believed in me and helped me regain my belief in myself,” she says. “He told me I could succeed - on my own.”

These days, Porco’s main challenge is managing a major growth spurt for her agency. Private duty care, in particular, is a fast-growing sector for medical staffing agencies. That’s in part because of a new trend: hospitalized patients, and those recovering from ailments or surgery, are hiring private nurses to help them recover. For more information on Porco and Nurses Today, check out her website at http://www.nursestoday.com/index.html.

• Check the caregiver’s qualifications carefully. Check references. Conduct a comprehensive interview.
• Discuss how your physician will interact and offer input on care.
• Evaluate costs and needs. Fees for an aide with limited medical responsibilities will be between $15 to $25 an hour; fees for skilled nurses will run from about $35 to $80 an hour.