Inpatient hospice facilities become more common

Chicago Tribune (MCT) - Weakened by heart failure and in need of round-the-clock care, Josephine Klancher balked at entering a nursing home. Her husband spent 11 long years in one after a stroke, and the memory chilled her.

Klancher and her family found comfort at a Joliet, Ill., inpatient hospice, an alternative to nursing homes and hospitals that is gaining popularity across the country.

As end-of-life care loses the stigma once attached to it, the new brand of inpatient hospice care is becoming downright luxurious _ with spas, large rooms with private patios and 24-hour visiting hours. The atmosphere is more like a lodge or a resort.

Before her death last November, Klancher, 94, spent five days at The Hospice Home. Her daughter Judy Naal still marvels at the peace of mind it brought to her mother and the whole family. Even meals were different from previous hospital or nursing home experiences.

"It's like a resort," Naal said. "You would never walk through that door and think you were in an institution."

Hospice care, often provided in the patient's home, focuses on quality of life. It combines medical treatment with pain management, social services, therapy and even spirituality. It also helps families deal with death.

Many nursing homes and hospitals have areas devoted to hospice care, but the new trend beginning to catch on is for "free standing" hospices _ separate from those other institutions.

In Illinois, inpatient hospices planned in Barrington and in Ogle County near Rockford will join The Hospice Home in Joliet, which opened in 2004.

"You won't see any medication carts being rolled down the hallway," said Judy Militello, director of business operations at the 16-bed Hospice Home. "Somebody once asked where the vending machines are. You won't see any of those here either. You don't have vending machines in your home."

Of the roughly 4,500 hospice programs across the country, 302 have free-standing inpatient-hospices, said Judi Lund Person, vice president for regulatory and state leadership at the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization.

With its large senior citizen population, Florida has the most _ 43. Illinois is just starting to catch on to the trend.

"They're becoming more popular across the country," said Lund Person.

Hospice of Northeastern Illinois recently won approval from Barrington to build an $18 million, 42,000-square-foot hospice with 16 beds on 6.7 acres of partially wooded land. It's scheduled to open by December 2009.

Adjacent to Citizen's Park at Lake Zurich Road and U.S. Highway 14, it will have a family room, children's play area, dining room, meditation room and spaces for educational programs.

With the medical expertise of a nursing home, but in a more homey setting, the free-standing hospices are similar to the end-of-life hospice services that visiting nurses, therapists and social workers provide to families in the patient's own home. It's just that sometimes home care is impractical.

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"Most people in hospice do want to die at home," Militello said. "But that's not always an option. Sometimes, people don't have a caregiver to care for them at home. Or they're younger and have children at home, and don't want the children exposed to that. Or their caregiver is elderly and can't care for them at home."

Militello and other experts say that makes inpatient hospice a logical option. The goal is the same for both hospice types, experts say _ making sure the patient's quality of life remains high.

That's often different from the way hospitals approach care, according to officials at Hospice of Northeastern Illinois, which is building the Barrington hospice.

"A hospital's focus is to get people back to the highest possible function," said William Reis, the hospice's interim president and CEO. "It's all curative. But sometimes a curative outcome is not going to be possible. So, what can we do to ease pain? And provide support to the patient, psychologically and emotionally?"

For Naal, The Hospice Home was the place where her mother and their family found peace.

"I just felt in the end it was such a comfort," Naal said. "It was the next best thing to home."

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