Stillwater Hospice & Kosciusko Home Care And Hospice Combine As One
Stillwater Hospice & Kosciusko Home Care And Hospice Combine As One
Posted
David Slone-dslone@timesuniononline.com
Stillwater Hospice & Kosciusko Home Care And Hospice Combine As OneMarch 1 is a significant date for Stillwater Hospice, and now it’s an important one for Kosciusko Home Care and Hospice (KHCH).
Tuesday afternoon, the two organizations announced at KHCH, 1515 Provident Drive, Warsaw, that they have combined as one, effective Wednesday, March 1.
Glenn Hall, KHCH executive director, said, “Obviously, this is a momentous occasion for our agency here at Kosciusko Home Care and Hospice, and we are beyond excited about establishing our future here in Kosciusko County. For 47 years, Kosciusko Home Care and Hospice has provided home care and hospice services to the residents of Kosciusko County.”
Over the last few years, he said, the healthcare environment has changed “drastically” and it’s become “more and more difficult” for KHCH as a small agency to keep up with the pace of the changes in the cost of providing care, employee benefits, etc.
“As a small agency, it became more and more of a challenge,” Hall said. “About the time my board of directors started looking outside our parameters of Kosciusko County, we were approached by Ms. Leslie Friedel, CEO of Stillwater Hospice based out of Fort Wayne.”
Stillwater had come into Kosciusko County and met with the K21 Health Foundation to talk about what the home care and hospice environment looked like in the county. K21’s CEO, Rich Haddad, suggested Stillwater check with KHCH.
“So when Leslie came and said, ‘Look, we don’t want to compete with you, how can we partner together to provide the best care for Kosciusko County?,’ our board talked with them. They made a proposal to us, and it became very clear to us that our missions were aligned almost bullet point to bullet point. Their presentation had so much heart and care in it that that’s the piece we loved the most,” Hall stated.
He said it wasn’t just about strategy, numbers or growing their market share.
“It was about how can we partner together,” Hall said. The KHCH board saw an opportunity to solidify KHCH’s future in providing services to Kosciusko County for the next 47 years or more. “And that was our desire and our dream.”
Effective Wednesday, March 1, KHCH will become part of Stillwater Hospice, he announced.
“We will be staying in this building, this office,” Hall said. “... The great other piece of this was, as a leader, I was passionate about making sure that my employees were taken care of, and every one of my employees was offered a position with Stillwater at their current pay rate. They get to keep their seniority and Stillwater’s benefits are obviously much better than ours, just because they have the economies of scale that we did not have.”
Before they ceremoniously signed the papers on the dotted line, Friedel said, “We’re so thankful to be here. I know when we originally met with Glenn and Jenny from Kosciusko Home Care and Hospice, we just blown away by the similarities in our organization.”
Stillwater Hospice was founded in Fort Wayne in 1888 by a group of women who wanted to serve the area and was known as the Ladies’ Relief Union. They became incorporated on March 1, 1900, “and that date is really special to our organization,” she said. The organization changed its name from Visiting Nurse Service and Hospice to Stillwater Hospice on March 1, 2022.
“And when we heard the history of Kosciusko Hospice, about 47 years ago, it’s very similar beginnings. We just really believe in the goal to serve with compassion and comfort and provide guidance to our families, and so we’re so excited to expand that into Kosciusko County, along with being a team here at Kosciusko Home Care and Hospice,” Friedel said.
Apart from the name change to Stillwater Hospice, patients and families should not expect to see too many changes with KHCH becoming a part of a Stillwater.
“Our goal is that for our patients, it would be transparent. There will be some minor changes that they might see, for example, the way we deliver medications or the way we deliver supplies, but as far as the folks providing care to Kosciusko County residents, it’s going to be the same folks that have always been here in the office with the addition of we have the benefit of additional coverage from Stillwater’s other counties that they cover if we need help,” Hall said.
At the time of the transaction, Hall said KHCH has 30 employees, including the Medication and Dental Assistance Program and the Help Center downstairs in the K21 Health Pavilion. Combined with Stillwater, Friedel said there will be about 195 employees, serving approximately 240 clients across 12 different counties, which are Adams, Allen, Blackford, DeKalb, Grant, Huntington, Jay, Kosciusko, Noble, Wabash, Wells and Whitley.
Asked about future growth in Kosciusko County specifically, Hall said, “We would like to see an increase in our ability to cover more hospice patients in this county. We also are looking at some additional programming.”
A year ago, he said KHCH tried to launch a palliative care program. It was slow taking off, but Hall said Stillwater offers a palliative care program, which they call chronic disease management. “But we would love to see those services expanded into Kosciusko County. And, again, in this office we have space to do some additional programming, so those are all things we’ll look at for the future,” he said.
Friedel said they also intend to add additional grief support services. “That is a partnership that is currently being provided here, but we hope to expand those things.”
Hall said Stillwater has the Hospice Home in Fort Wayne with 14 beds where patients can be housed that need inpatient care. Stillwater has the only freestanding hospice home in northeast Indiana, he said.
Additionally, Stillwater has the Peggy F. Murphy Community Grief Center in Fort Wayne. Hall said it’s a “lovely” facility open to the public for grief counseling and one does not have to have been a Stillwater client to participate in grief counseling at that center.
The board of directors for the organizations will be combined to include board members of KHCH and Stillwater, Friedel said. Hall will be staying on as the executive director of the KHCH entity.
“Obviously, it will take some time to close out that entity. Our patients will be transferred to Stillwater. Our employees will be moved over to Stillwater. We’ll still have some trickling of invoices to pay and accounts receivable to collect and those things,” Hall said. “And then with the Stillwater organization, I’m going to be the Kosciusko community outreach director. But they have been very gracious in asking me to stay on with the organization, particularly through the transition, and that’s a real honor for me.”
Anyone interested in learning more about Stillwater Hospice’s services, volunteer roles and career opportunities should visit Stillwater-Hospice.org or call 800-288-4111, according to a news release provided at Tuesday’s announcement.
