Who Pays Last? Applied Economist Stephen Deason Turns Home Care Handoffs Into Free Tools for Families

The founder and CEO of OPA Home Care and Skilled Nursing in Roswell, Georgia has written more than 30 books, guides, and workbooks and published a free library of 41 family resources, all built on one idea: in every system, someone pays last.

ROSWELL, GA / ACCESS Newswire / November 13, 2026 / Stephen Deason, applied economist, entrepreneur, operating executive and author, today outlined the work behind OPA Home Care and Skilled Nursing, Alder Creek Editions and stephendeason.com. OPA is a licensed private home care provider based in Roswell, Georgia. Alder Creek Editions is the imprint that publishes his books. His personal site is where he publishes essays and takes speaking and media inquiries.

Deason has spent about forty years working inside health care and more than 31 years building teams and companies in healthcare, technology, and social enterprise. His premise is simple. When a handoff fails, the cost lands on whoever cannot refuse it.

A Career Spent Inside Health Care

Before OPA, Deason was CEO of GRYYT, a marketing technology company, and held C-level positions at three other technology companies. He trained in economics and accounting. He holds an MBA and an MSc in Accounting from Emory University and a BSc in Mathematics from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

He completed all but the dissertation for a PhD in Business at Emory’s Laney Graduate School, where his research focused on accounting data and behavioral economics. He also pursued graduate study as a Dean’s Scholar at Johns Hopkins and is an alum of its CityLabs program.

His article “The Role of Accounting in Ponzi Schemes” was published in the peer-reviewed journal Accounting Horizons in 2021 and covered by Forbes. His writing has also appeared in CPA Practice Advisor.

Companies That Do Careful Work

Deason founded OPA while in long-term recovery. He wanted companies that do careful work for the people they serve and that give people a way into good jobs.

OPA Home Care and Skilled Nursing is a licensed private home care provider based in Roswell, Georgia. It serves families in more than 12 Georgia counties who pay privately, through long-term care insurance, or through the VA’s Community Care program.

Deason also founded OPA Staffing and OPA People, which are part of The OPA RASA Group. His staffing business has staffed across 15 states and more than 112 facilities.

The OPA RASA Foundation is a separate nonprofit that grew out of that second purpose. It has worked to place hundreds of people from disadvantaged backgrounds into a variety of careers.

Where Care Breaks Down

Care for an older adult usually breaks at the handoffs. The hospital, the doctors, the agency, the insurer, and the family each handle one piece. Nobody is assigned the handoffs between the pieces, and that is where things get dropped. Deason saw it happen in his own family.

His book The Weakest Link started with his mother. An infection went unnoticed until it showed up as delirium. Writing the book is how he learned to explain what a care system is, where it breaks, and what a family can do before it breaks.

“In every system, someone pays last,” Deason says. “When a handoff fails, the cost lands on whoever cannot refuse it: the family of an aging parent, the person trying to stay sober without treatment, the owner of a small company.” His companies, research, and books are about who that person is and what they can do.

OPA Home Care is built to carry those handoffs. Home care runs on reliability, and Deason has spent much of his work at OPA building the scheduling, backup coverage, and coordination that put a caregiver in the home when the schedule says one will be there.

He has also worked through Joint Commission accreditation, Georgia’s licensing rules for home care, the VA’s Community Care program, healthcare staffing across many states, and federal and state wage law. In each case, the work was to write the system down, measure it, and fix it where it failed. He looks at care the way an economist does. For any care arrangement, he asks who is responsible for each piece of the work and who pays when a piece is dropped.

A Free Library Any Family Can Use

“I am an operator who writes the system down and gives it away,” Deason says. The Knowledge Center on opahomecare.com holds 41 downloadable resources in standard print, large print, and Spanish. A family can use every one of them without ever calling OPA.

The library includes The Family Integrator’s Handbook, a 101-page guide that is free as a PDF or available in a bound edition. It also includes the Care Coordination Grid, a one-page shared record of who is doing what, and the Next of Kin Box, an outline for gathering the documents and facts a family will need in one place. Families will also find worksheets for hospital discharge, medications, paying for care, and dividing the work among family members, along with the Operational Reliability worksheets, a page of source-linked home care statistics, and the OPA Home Care blog.

Books for Families, Owners, and People in Recovery

Deason is the author of more than 30 books, guides, and workbooks published by Alder Creek Editions. More than 20 of them are free to download, and aldercreekeditions.com/free-printables lists every free download in one place. The catalog spans five series.

The Operational Reliability Series. The Weakest Link (Book I) covers an acute family healthcare crisis and the handoffs where care breaks down. The Invisible Architecture (Book II) covers the slower crisis after care changes. Both are $4.99 on Kindle and $14.99 in paperback. Readers on Amazon have called The Weakest Link “a road map for navigating the complex silos of health care provided to our most vulnerable elderly” (Cynthia Ferris, a retired physician, October 9, 2026). Another reader, caring for a father who is a veteran, wrote: “Now I know why and more importantly, how to navigate” (Avid Reader, October 4, 2026).

The Sitting Room Series. These are large-print guides, workbooks, and journals for older adults and the families around them, numbered in the order most families meet these questions. Books available now include When More Help Is Needed, Who to Contact, While You Can Still Decide, Grieving Someone Who Is Still Here, and The Move and the First Months. Free downloads include the Emergency Information Sheet, Before It’s Urgent, Things I Want You to Know, Arranging Care at Home, Care Partner’s Log, Visit Journal, Choosing a Place to Live, and First-Year Grief Journal.

The Paid Last Series. This series is for business owners and the people they develop. Residual Claimants: How to Think Like and Become a Business Owner is available in hardcover, with the opening chapters free to read. Its companion is The Realities of Ownership.

The Mile Marker Library. These are practical recovery books, free to download and numbered in the order people tend to need them, starting with Don’t Panic: The First Hours After You Stop. The library also includes the Wallet Crisis Card, Free Help Directory, Medications for Addiction, Explained, Tools You Can Use on Your Own, Cravings and Hard Hours Workbook, One Day at a Time, Written Down (general and Christian editions), Money in Early Recovery, Work and Recovery, Finding a Safe Place to Live, For Families, and a Group Facilitator Guide for running free peer support groups. Several of the recovery books are written with Melissa Deason.

More titles. The Complaints Log Book is for service businesses. A free Care Complaints Log Book is for families, friends, and advocates of older adults and people with disabilities. Deason and his daughter wrote a full-color children’s book together, The Ladybug and the Butterfly, published under the byline Laine & Daddy. He is also a co-author of Mission Matters: World’s Leading Entrepreneurs Reveal Their Top Tips to Success.

Teaching, Speaking, and What Comes Next

Deason has always taught at the whiteboard, and that is still how he runs a meeting. He has trained more than a thousand people to read a profit and loss statement.

He is a keynote speaker on machine learning, AI, and the changing job market, including “ML Will Redesign, Not Replace, Jobs” at InterCon USA 2019 in Las Vegas. He also delivered a keynote for Shatterproof and joined Cox Enterprises’ EMPOWER panel on the workforce impact of substance use, anxiety, stress, and depression. He has been a guest on iHeart Radio and on North Fulton Business Radio, in an interview on April 22, 2025.

His speaking topics are ownership and entrepreneurial judgment, organizational responsibility, the family integrator and the handoff, and the first hard hours of recovery. His essays on recovery, systems, entrepreneurship, economics, and foundations are at stephendeason.com, with a Frameworks and Definitions page that explains the terms he uses. He serves on four nonprofit boards and on the advisory boards of two startup technology and telecommunications companies.

“I want OPA Home Care to be the first call for families and hospital discharge planners in north metro Atlanta,” Deason says. He also wants each Alder Creek Editions series in the hands of the people it was written for, and he wants to spend more of his time speaking and teaching owners how to read their own businesses.

About Stephen Deason

Stephen Deason is an applied economist, entrepreneur, operating executive, and author. He is founder and CEO of OPA Home Care and Skilled Nursing, a licensed private home care provider in Roswell, Georgia, and founder of OPA Staffing and OPA People. He also founded The OPA RASA Foundation, a separate nonprofit. His books are published by Alder Creek Editions, and his essays are at stephendeason.com. He holds an MBA and an MSc in Accounting from Emory University and a BSc in Mathematics from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His article “The Role of Accounting in Ponzi Schemes” was published in Accounting Horizons in 2021.

Media Contact

Stephen Deason
Founder and CEO, OPA Home Care and Skilled Nursing
Stephendeason@gmail.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephendeason, opahomecare.com and aldercreekeditions.com, aldercreekeditions.com/press. Amazon author page, Goodreads.

SOURCE: Stephen Deason

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