Home healthcare firms foresee boom, challenges

Willie Peterson II can't say enough good things about the home health care services he receives, or about Lynn Adams, the registered nurse who visits a few times a week to care for him at his Decatur, Ga., home. "If not for them, I'd be up the creek without a paddle," he said. Or in a nursing home. Peterson, 62, was paralyzed from the waist down by a falling tree in 1998 and needs regular skilled medical attention. Now he has personalized care that keeps him out of the hospital and feeling independent.