Home Health & Hospice Week

Hospices often furnish services in patients’ homes, assisted living facilities, and nursing homes — and sometimes even hotels and shelters. But they also might have an option arising from a new trend — hospice houses not tied to a specific hospice program or its requirements.

For example: In Akron, Ohio, a nonprofit organization plans to operate a hospice home to care for dying patients who don’t have a home or caregivers. The facility, known as Grace House Akron, will have six bedrooms and will employ eight paid caregivers who will staff the house 24 hours a day, as well as an unpaid volunteer coordinator, reports the Beacon Journal newspaper. Patients will have to be enrolled in a hospice program, not have a caregiver, and not be able to pay for a private caregiver. The house will be funded with donations and grants.

Summa Health system is selling the group the land near Summa St. Thomas Hospital for the house for $10. The lot formerly housed an empty medical building for 20 years, says the Beacon Journal. President Holly Klein expects the average stay to be 40 to 50 days and 30 percent of all admissions to pass away within seven days. There are about 50 similar houses throughout the nation, the newspaper says.