Eli's Hospice Insider

Despite the feds’ crackdown on the hospice General Inpatient (GIP) care level of care, facilities continue to open up across the nation.

In Wisconsin: Hospice Alliance of Prairie Ridge has begun accepting patients for its new facility in Mount Pleasant. The Racine Hospice House on the Lincoln Lutheran hospital campus has five bedrooms, the hospice notes in a release. Hospice Alliance already has an eight-bedroom facility in the Kenosha area.

“We know that 94 percent of patients would choose to die at home,” Hospice Alliance Executive Director Rita Hagen says in the release. “We work closely with patients and families to provide warm personalized care to fulfill that choice. However, we also understand that for some families home care isn’t an option. In these cases, our homelike Hospice House is a wonderful alternative.”

In Connecticut: Regional Hospice and Home Care of Western Connecticut Inc. is constructing a hospice residence, it says on its website. The 12-bedroom facility will receive $1.2 million in state funds for its Healing Hearts Center For Grieving Children & Families program. The hospice hopes to have the facility operational within 16 months, reports the News Times newspaper.

In New York: Hospice Buffalo is partnering with nursing home Beechwood Homes to open The Hospice Wells House at the Beechwood Continuing Care Campus in Getzville. Wells House has 22 rooms, reports the Buffalo News.

In Massachusetts: Hospice of the North Shore & Greater Boston plans to develop a 20-bed inpatient hospice facility in Waltham, it says. “With our acquisition of Partners Hospice in 2011, our territory and the number of patients we care for has grown significantly,” says Diane Stringer, HNSGB president, in the Daily News Tribune. “We’re caring for more patients in Middlesex, Suffolk and Norfolk counties and oftentimes it is not convenient for them to travel to our inpatient hospice facility in Danvers.”

“While the majority of hospice patients spend their final weeks in their own homes, a growing number have care needs that are simply too complex to be managed in the home setting,” Stringer says. “We also are caring for more pediatric hospice patients, and there is no facility outside of a hospital that can provide the needed level of care for dying children and their families.”

In Kentucky: Hospice of Western Kentucky opened an inpatient facility in Owensboro in October. The 12-bedroom Heartford House is the first freestanding hospice facility in Western Kentucky, the hospice says on its website.