Hospice of the North Shore and Greater Boston has come a long way from the all-volunteer company that began in a two-family house in downtown Beverly in 1978.
Today it has 385 employees, offers a range of services, not just hospice, helping 550 people each day while serving about 90 cities and towns from the New Hampshire border to Norfolk County communities just south of Boston.
And starting Jan. 1, the Hospice will take on a new name — Care Dimensions.
Part of the reason for the new name, was the length of the old name.
“We realized that that’s kind of a mouthful and that some people don’t consider themselves from Greater Boston or the North Shore,” President and CEO Diane Stringer said. “They say they were from Metro West. Someone said to me, ‘Well, I’m from Saugus, that’s not the North Shore.’ OK, well then what is it?”
But in addition to the length and the geography of the old name, there was another reason for changing names.
“As our organization has grown, we really have expanded the array of services that we offer, so it’s more than just hospice,” said Stringer.
The new name was announced to employees on Monday and was unveiled to supporters and friends of the organization, whose administrative staff and the bulk of its employees work out of its main offices at 75 Sylvan St. in Danvers, at a party on Tuesday night.
“We realized that there is a lot of confusion and some misconceptions about hospice anyway,” said Stringer. “So people think hospice is like one big national organization. Or all hospices are the same. Or hospice is just for the final days of life.”
Stringer notes take many people think of the Kaplan House, located at 78 Liberty St., as what hospice is all about. The Kaplan House, which is part of the hospice services, offers a home-like atmosphere for terminally ill patients.
“But at most there are 20 people getting care at the Kaplan House,” said Stringer. “There are 530 other people who are receiving our care in the community. The Kaplan House is bricks and mortar and it’s an exceptional place but it’s not all that we are.”
The majority of the hospice patients remain at home, though some are in assisted living communities, in skilled nursing facilities, or in group homes.
“The members of our interdisciplinary team – our hospice nurse, social worker, home health aide, chaplain are visiting the patient at home, are helping and supporting and coaching the family to care for that patient at home,” said Stringer.
She said that hospice has come to be defined by regulatory bodies and by insurers as care for someone who has a life expectancy of six months or less.
“Since Medicare started in the ’60s, they have only added two benefits in 50-something years,” said Stringer, “The hospice benefit in the mid-’80s and Part D prescription drug coverage.”
In addition to hospice services, Hospice has offered palliative care since 2003. About 220 patients receive these services daily.
“Those are people who for whatever reason might not be ready for hospice,” said Stringer. “Either they are earlier in the course of an illness, they maybe living with chronic illness and have pain management, you know pain issues.”
But the palliative care is also a help to the families of the patients.
“A lot of times, (palliative care) helps the patient and family to clarify the goals of care and what to expect and to prepare for as the illness becomes more advanced,” said Stringer. “Palliative care can help support those conservations and help people with identifying what kind of decisions they need to be making, what they need to be thinking about as the illness progress.”
Hospice has been providing palliative care services, first in collaboration with the North Shore Medical Center, but has expanded over the years to include Beverly Hospital, Winchester Hospital, and Emerson Hospital in Concord, as well as providing the care to patients at home through their palliative nursing practitioners.
Hospice also offers grief counseling through the Bertolon Center for Grief and Healing, located at the Kaplan House on Liberty Street.
“We provide grief support for anyone on the community who has had a loss, whether or not they’ve had hospice care,” said Stringer. “Actually just about half the people who avail themselves of the services of the Bertolon Center haven’t had hospice care.”
Stringer noted that as part of the outreach of the Bertolon Center, they helped out at Danvers High School last month after math teacher Colleen Ritzer was found murdered at the school.
“Our bereavement counselors reached out and provided some additional services and support to the students and faculty,” said Stringer.
In the next month or so before the change takes affect, Hospice will be doing a lot to get the word out about the new name, according to Jean Graham, the senior director of marketing at Hospice.
“We’ll be doing a lot of advertising and promotion at the beginning of the year, once we switch,” said Graham. “It’s a great opportunity to get the word out about hospice in general. It’s not one of those services that you ever really think about, until you really need it.”