For the past 31 years, UCI Inc. has served more than 100 health care facilities throughout the United States of America.
Ultimate Care, Inc. (UCI) was founded in March 1985 in Florida, USA, by a woman who is a registered nurse (RN) from the Philippines.
The company’s success started when Mrs. Fe Arellano Hanvivatpong, then a head nurse of a health care facility in Boca Raton, Florida, was requested by her facility administrator to go back to her native country to recruit at most three RNs to work in the USA.
Mrs. Hanvivatpong’s trip in June 1987 was a success.
It marked the beginning of many successful recruitment activities that continue to this day, 22 years after, and that involves recruiting medical practitioners from 15 countries around the world.
UCI was initially established so that Mrs. Hanvivatpong and its co-founder, Mrs. Juliet Palang Gejon, can do some part time work as private duty nurses. Mrs. Gejon is also a RN from the Philippines. UCI is a minority-owned company.
However, after the first recruitment trip to the Philippines, the UCI founder decided to leave her post as a head nurse and go full time in the recruitment of foreign-trained RNs to work in Florida. Today, UCI-recruited RNs work in various health care facilities across the USA.
With just six candidate RNs processed for US working visas in 1987, to over 2,500 foreign-trained RNs and other medical professionals today from Asia, Europe, the Caribbean Islands and Africa.
UCI’s recruitment program has expanded to include physical therapists (PTs), occupational therapists (OTs) and other allied health care professionals. Eighty-five percent (85%) of these foreign-trained medical professionals are RNs working in various health care facilities in the US.
The UCI mission is to provide high-caliber medical professionals to its client health care facilities in the most cost effective ways while maintaining high standards and quality care to its patients.
In order to answer to the shortage of registered nurses in the local market, UCI has specialized in the recruitment of foreign-trained registered nurses from different countries.
Majority of the foreign-trained nurses recruited and placed by UCI are from the Philippines. The rest are from India, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, the Caribbean Islands, United Kingdom, and some parts of Africa.
Today, UCI’s recruitment program also includes physical therapists and occupational therapists.
From 1987 to 1997, UCI successfully recruited about 1,700 foreign-trained nurses. There was a slow down in arrivals in 1998 when the USCIS implemented the visa screen certificate as a requirement for foreign-trained nurses.
UCI does not have the statistics of retention of other health care clients except records from hospitals owned by HCA Inc., which is approximately 75%.
