Also, for the first time, the organization will add inpatient respite care so a person receiving hospice care can stay at the facility while family caregivers take a respite break.
The Dayton Daily News has previously reported on the growing number of unpaid family caregivers and their need for more support.
“Sometimes you’re a 24-hour caregiver, and a daughter at the same time,” said Carey Short, executive director of Ohio’s Hospice of Miami County. “In order to care for somebody else, you have to take care of yourself. And that’s hard to do when you’re a caregiver.”
When Ohio’s Hospice of Miami County announced the construction kickoff in early 2020, officials said the year prior they sometimes had a waitlist for an inpatient room.
The population across the region and the U.S. is increasingly shifting to more older adults, who increasingly manage more than one complex illness. The latest data from National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization reports 1.55 million Medicare beneficiaries were enrolled in hospice care for one day or more in 2018, up from 1.49 million from prior year and 1.32 million five years prior.
Ohio’s Hospice of Miami serves about 150 patients on average at a time, most in their home or in an assisted living or nursing facility.
Along with inpatient rooms, the new building has an interfaith chapel; a spa and massage room for patients in the community and staying inpatient; private meeting spaces for families; and a large family living room. There’s a shower available for families staying the night.
It also has a library with relevant books like the children’s story “What Cloud is My Grandpa In?” Patient rooms have a painting that can be shifted over to hide medical equipment in the walls and keep the rooms more home-like.
Patient rooms all also have a direct door to the outside.
“The beds fit out these doors, so if we have a patient that can’t get out of bed but really wants to get outside, we can bring them out onto that little patio with their family,” Short said.
The seven inpatient rooms are now inside the Upper Valley Medical Center and the new freestanding inpatient hospice center is down the road but still on the hospital campus.
Ohio’s Hospice of Miami County has launched its first-ever building campaign to help cover construction costs.
The organization is one of a group of 10 affiliates that are part of the nonprofit Ohio’s Hospice. In recent years, affiliates of the organization have taken on more than $30 million in construction projects.
This includes in Washington Twp., where an $8 million, 31,000-square-foot building for the Ohio’s Hospice campus is under construction. It will house a staff education and care coordination center designed to primarily deal with telecommunications services, adding 50 jobs over the next five years.
A new palliative care campus called Pure Healthcare opened January 2020. The campus, which was about a $10 million project, opened on the Miami Valley South campus and is a medical home for people with complex health conditions from Alzheimer’s to COPD to cancer.
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