[ back ]
Non-profit hospice alternative plants its roots
(by Maggie Fazeli Fard - January 30, 2008)
|
Fast facts
|
- Hospice is end-of-life palliative care for patients who have less than six months to live.
|
- Hospice as a philosophy was conceived in the late 1960s to de-institutionalize death, giving people the opportunity to die with comfort and dignity at home or in a home-like setting.
|
- Hospice at Bergen Community Health Care, formerly a non-profit affiliate of
Pascack
Valley
Hospital , was founded in 1989.
|
- When PVH closed last fall, Care Alternatives, a for-profit hospice organization servicing 450 patients, acquired Hospice at BCHC.
|
- A handful of staffers, including the medical director, recently split from Care Alternatives to form Community Hospice of Bergen County, a smaller, non-profit hospice team.
|
Hoping to provide alternative end-of-life care in the
Pascack
Valley , four former employees of a
Pascack
Valley
Hospital affiliate have split from Care Alternatives and created Community Hospice of Bergen County.
Wendy Megerman, formerly the volunteer coordinator of Hospice at Bergen Community Health Care, one of the PVH affiliates purchased late last year in the wake of the hospital’s closing, has teamed up with Donna Bott, a hospice volunteer and community educator, Patricia Hutzelman, a founder of Hospice at BCHC and hospice coordinator from 1989 to 2006, and Dr. Alan Israel, the medical director of Hospice at BCHC since its inception, to form the new hospice team.
“We are for the community, of the community, by the community,” said Megerman in an effort to summarize the group’s game plan.
The idea to create Community Hospice arose shortly after PVH closed and Care Alternatives acquired the hospice license last fall. The acquisition went into effect mid-December, leading into a transition that was immediate and smooth, said Megerman. “They came in and were very kind to the employees,” she said. “They’re really trying to make it work.”
Still, Megerman, Bott and agreed that they wanted to offer community-based end-of-life care on a small scale as Hospice at BCHC did, care that they suspect Care Alternatives, a for-profit organization that services more than 450 patients, would be hard-pressed to provide.
The trio makes up three of the six former Hospice at BCHC employees that have left Care Alternatives (nine employees, including part-timers, remain with Care Alternatives) and joined Hutzelman in forming Community Hospice, which was incorporated two weeks ago.
“I got the certifications of incorporation in the mail Saturday [Jan. 19] and it was so exciting!” exclaimed Megerman.
The team has also opened a bank account, and while most of the funds have come from their own pockets, Megerman said that donations have started to come in. Megerman said that these and future donations will be the lifeblood of Community Hospice as it plants its roots.
“We decided that all the monies would have to come from the community,” said Megerman. “We don’t want to have to answer to any investor. What we want is to raise the money from the community. There is no vested interest in this except for the vested interest of the patients.”
The coming weeks and months will require Community Hospice to obtain a temporary license, accreditation and full licensure. Megerman expects that the team will begin seeing its first patients by October – “If we’re not seeing patients by then,” she said, “we’re in trouble” – but Medicare won’t kick in for some time after that. She estimates that it will take $300,00 to get hospice off the ground until Medicare can offset expenses. After that, first-year expenses are estimated at $900,000.
Megerman said that right now Community Hospice is accepting donations of any kind, be it in the form of computers, insurance, legal assistance or office furniture. “We need a rug,” she said before adding, “We need money. Mainly we need money to take care of the patients.”
She and Bott currently share a small office provided free of charge by
United
Methodist
Church in Westwood. They will approach other religious institutions as well as local organizations and governing bodies for additional assistance, and plan to hold a springtime fundraiser.
“We’re going to make a salary eventually,” she said. “Maybe. But not yet.”
Megerman said that while the group is not 501(c)3 certified, all donations will be tax deductible. Additionally, she said that any money that is raised will be returned to donors if her team can’t make hospice a reality.
“If there isn’t that [community] interest,” she said, “we won’t do it.”
In addition to end-of-life palliative care for patients who have less than six months to live, Community Hospice will provide a 10-week training course for volunteers, weekly inter-disciplinary team meetings that will be held in private for two to three hours, and a bereavement program for family members.
The team would work in conjunction with other non-profit hospice programs affiliated with nearby hospitals, but the plan is to remain independent for the time being.
“We’re not going to sell ourselves to anybody,” emphasized Bott, but added that if a hospital were to reopen on the former PVH site, affiliation would not be out of the question.
In the long term, said Megerman, the Community Hospice team wants to open a house for dying patients. “For a long time, people just died in hospitals,” she said. “We want to give this to people so they’re not alone. So they’re not forgotten.”
Shaking off the hopeful musing, Megerman added that while her team is optimistic, there are still obstacles in the way. “I had terrible dreams about this – the tigers were eating me!” she said. “We need to start from scratch. [But] we don’t mind modest roots and we don’t mind remaining modest.”
Contributions can be send to Community Hospice of Bergen County, 105 Fairview Ave. Westwood, NJ
07675, to the attention of Donna Bott. For more information, call 201-747-2888 or 201-803-9660.
Maggie Fazeli Fard's e-mail address is fazelifard@northjersey.com.
[ back ]
