April 16, 2003
Hospice House breaks ground
Construction begins on Munson Healthcare facility
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
Six shovels full of dirt will translate into eight homelike rooms over the next 18 months, as construction on Munson Healthcare's Hospice House officially got underway Monday morning.
With the groundbreaking by six area Munson Healthcare and community members, the Hospice House begins the next phase of the journey: getting ready to serve up to 105 families a year. While fundraising for the goal of $2.5 million continues, with 80 percent of the funds in hand, it was time to start construction on the 9,600 square foot facility.
"This is a dream come true," said Jay Zrimec, vice president for public affairs at Munson Healthcare. "It can be very draining on people to have to take care of someone in that stage of life, they become a caretaker not a comforter. The end of life can be a celebration if you handle it well, we don't really handle it well as Americans."
Ross Child, co-chair of the Hospice House fundraising initiative, pointed to the program's broad community support over the past three years. In fact, the effort has received nearly 2,400 separate donations in that time, a high proportion of individual contributions.
"There's been a lot of smaller donations and it has been very much community oriented in terms of community gifts," he noted of the $1.99 million raised so far. "If a family has been impacted by the Hospice program, they know the value to the family, the children, grandchildren and, in some cases, the great grandchildren."
The services that the Hospice House will offer range from physical and mental to emotional and spiritual. Doctors, nurses, social workers and a chaplain comprise the staff, all geared to helping patients and families create a nurturing environment for saying goodbye. Palliative care will also be emphasized and the Hospice therapy dog Pal will live in the Hospice House when it is completed.
The Hospice House will also include bedrooms for family members so they can stay with their loved one as much as they want. The nearby Munson Manor is also available for family members and friends. The Hospice House will also have a chapel, a meditation garden, a community room and a kitchen plus a whirlpool tub room.
The building will be situated in a peaceful wooded setting on the Munson campus. Each patient room will have a outside deck and will face the woods, providing a tranquil, private setting.
Dr. Homer Nye, minister at The Presbyterian Church, said a facility like the Hospice House fulfills a crucial need in the community.
"I think that the need toward the end of life is just phenomenal in terms of emotional, physical and spiritual needs and not every family is able to provide that," said Nye, who has been involved in the project to build the Hospice House. "Instead of a totally clinical setting, people can go to a home environment and not only have immediate nursing care but emotional and spiritual care as well."
Registered Nurse Meredith Goodrick is the clinical director of the Hospice program. She said the philosophy of Hospice and the Hospice House is to make a person's end of life less of a medical crisis and more of a natural passage.
"We try to look at the end of life as just another phase instead of an acute medical illness, to alter that acute medical care model," Goodrick noted. "It is very rewarding to work with Hospice families, it is true nursing."