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Betty Walters cares for Rachel Swink, 15, who suffers from a muscular disease. Walters is a hospice volunteer, along with husband Neal, and cares for Rachel to give the girl's parents a break.
Hospice Support Care volunteers Betty and Neal Walters care yesterday for Rachel Swink, a Chancellor resident bed-ridden with a degenerative muscular disease. The area's hospice patients should benefit from a pact between its hospice agencies to refer their patients to each other. |
Hospice Support Care and Mary Washington Hospice have agreed to refer patients to one another and to jointly sponsor community educational events.
In addition, Mary Washington Hospice will provide medical services to residents of Harbor House, Hospice Support Care's Fredericksburg home for the terminally ill.
The agreement approved recently signals a new chapter in the sometimes competitive, often confusing, relationship between the hospice agencies.
Many patients and their families are not aware that there are two local hospice agencies, nor do they understand the differences between them, officials said.
"There are some similarities but there are also vast differences," said Carrington L. Bailey, manager of Mary Washington Hospice.
Officials hope that the new agreement will reduce this confusion. Hospice Support Care officials also hope that the agreement will result in more referrals from Mary Washington Hospice.
"We'd like to serve a larger number of people," said Angela Eubank, public relations manager for Hospice Support Care. "There's more help available than people realize."
Hospice Support Care, which has offices at 2119 Lafayette Boulevard, is the older of the two agencies, founded in 1981.
Its corps of 150 volunteers provides patients and their families with emotional, spiritual and practical help. The volunteers often provide transportation or give the caretaker a needed break.
"We go in and stay with the patient, and the caretaker gets to go out and do errands," said Lee's Hill resident Betty Walters, who with her husband, Neal, has been a Hospice Support Care volunteer.
Mary Washington Hospice at 2300 Fall Hill Avenue was founded in 1994 by MediCorp Health System. As a medical hospice, many of its patients receive skilled nursing care and medication to control symptoms and relieve pain.
Mary Washington Hospice's patients usually have six months or less to live and are no longer seeking a cure for their illnesses. In fact, about a third of the patients are treated for seven days or less, Bailey said.
Hospice Support Care does not offer medical care. Nor does it require patients to have six months or less to live, or to abandon all treatment. Instead, its volunteers may serve a patient for weeks or months.
The two agencies also differ in their financing. The popular perception is that Hospice Support Care is free, and that Mary Washington Hospice is not, Bailey said. However, the reality is more complicated than that.
Hospice Support Care does not bill for its services. The agency receives funding from private donations, fund-raisers and from agencies such as the Rappahannock United Way.
Mary Washington Hospice bills the patient's insurance, often Medicare or Medicaid. It does not bill the patient for any expense not paid by insurance.
"We give a lot away on co-pays," Bailey said.
Many patients receive the services of both hospices. Of the 47 patients that Hospice Support Care was serving last week, six of them also were being treated by Mary Washington Hospice.
Both hospices serve residents of the immediate Fredericksburg area. Mary Washington Hospice also serves patients in Orange, Fauquier and Westmoreland counties.
For more information, call Hospice Support Care at 540/710-0481 and Mary Washington Hospice at 540/899-3580.
