Chatting with Hospice Director Larry Robertson are (left to right) Glen Clark (Suddenlink), Robertson, President Tom Midkiff (State Farm) and Eric Pritt (United Bank).

Robertson shows plans for new Hospice offices.

October 7, 2008

In all the major categories by which hospice care is rated, the local organization serving sixteen counties in West Virginia ranks at or above the national level: This includes satisfaction with pain control, symptom management, education, on-call, emotional support and spiritual concerns.

In "overall care", local patients rate Hospice Care well above the national average, Executive Director Larry E. Robertson told Putnam Rotarians today.

Hospice Care was organized in the greater Kanawha valley in 1979 when a group of volunteers provided end-of-life services for seven patients on a donated budget of five hundred dollars.

"That was somebody's dream," said Robertson. "Somebody's idea -- that here's a program that we can put together" to offer care for seven patients for $500.

"This year," said Robertson, "we will take care of 2,000 patients with a budget of $20 million.

"And we touch the lives of thousands because each one of those patients has families , friends, churches, and communities.

"We have a payroll just under $9 million, 240 employees -- everything from physicians, to registered nurses, LPNs, nurse aides, chaplains, counselors, accountants, management staff, three full-time IT persons, taking care of computers -- laptops in the hands of nurses out in the field.

"We are in sixteen counties," said Robertson, "from Mason County over on the western part of the state over to Pocahontas and Greenbrier.

"We have offices in five different location," he continued. "We have a small office down in Madison, an office in Summersville up in Nicholas County, a large office in Lewisburg.

"We have forty-some people who work in the Lewisburg area. We have a new facility that the folks at Pray Construction are remodeling for us over there. We hope to open that new facility in December.

"We have a brand new facility going up in Charleston. We have been in Dunbar for about fifteen years in what was the old Sloan Department Store. (My office is where they used to sell ladies' handbags and shoes.)

"We're moving out of there into new administrative headquarters on Patrick Street at Kanawha Boulevard. Kenny Cooper, Sherri Payne with Pray Construction are our contractors. It's a $4.5 million project. Eric Pritt and his bank (United) are doing the financing with a tax-exempt loan through the Charleston Building Commission. (Our interest rate on that tax-expempt loan has been running under two percent.)

"It's an 18,000 square foot building. We're currently in 15,000 square feet in Dunbar. (We've got people right now that are working out of closets.)

"Glen Clark (Suddenlink) has helped us with our cabling.

"And then there's our Hubbard Hospice House. We built that facility in 2001 as a twelve-bed facility, using, again, some tax-exempt money that we borrowed.

"It was expanded to twenty-four beds in 2005. And that facility runs pretty much at capacity.

"Kanawha Hospice Care took the risk to build the Hubbard Hospice House. There were a lot of nay-sayers. Even our own medical directors said it would never work.

"But we took the gamble. And it was a good gamble. We keep the facility filled.

"They've built one just like in in Huntington, in Beckley. They're building one in Wheeling and in Martinsburg. There's another one in Elkins.

"The Kanawha group took the risk, and now there are six -- going on eight -- all around the state to provide care for terminally-ill patients."The Hubbard House is a very important place," he explained, "as families start to have loved ones whose symptoms can no longer be managed at home.

"The hospice care program traditionally is built around care for patients in their homes so people can spend their final days in their own homes with their families.

"But there are times when that is just not possible. Symptom management -- the patient are having pain and suffering that cannot be managed in the home -- or the care givers can't handle the situation anymore. The care givers are elderly. The care givers have to work. Or, surprisingly, there are a lot of elderly people in our community who have no survivors.

"We get most of our money from Medicare and Medicaid. About 85 percent of our patients are covered by Medicare or Medicaid.

"Obviously, with the aging of West Virginia, the need for the program will continue to grow."

Community support for Hospice Care has been generous. "Last year, our community support totaled about $1.5 million, coming in the form of in-lieu-of-flowers, and small fund-raisers in the $10 to $15,000 range.

"We do raffles every year at the auto show. we have a tennis tournament, we do a gala at the Tidewater Restaurant. We get the proceeds from the chili cook-off on Kanawha Boulevard. We do a 10K run in Lewisburg.

"Our biggest fund-raiser is the love-light trees in the Town Center mall. We have four Christmas trees set up and people make donations by placing ornaments of the trees in memory of their loved ones.

medicare, as you know, doesn't pay the full cost. It pays for about ninety percent of the costs, and without that $1.5 million of community support, we'd have to cut back on our services."

New programs in Hospice Care include Kids Path which started two years ago. Young children sometimes have terminal illnesses. "We've had children come to Hubbard House directly from the NICU at Women and Childrens Hospital." Those cases are often not covered by insurance, and Hospice assumes a major part of the cost.

"You may have read that Hospice bought an adult day-care in Kanawha City. This center is slanted toward Alzheimer's and dementia patients. Recent surveys show that there are 44,000 Alzheimer patients in West Virginia; 6,500 of those live in Kanawha and Putnam counties.

"Our goal is to set the day-care in Kanawha City as a model facility for 20-25 patients, and then take that model to other places in our service area.

"Hospice services are available to persons who have six months or less to live. Referrals come from doctors, from family members, from hospitals, from nursing homes.

"In Putnam County this year," said Robertson, "we are serving 200 patients and their families, many of those coming out of the Hurricane and Scott Depot subdivisions.

"Those 200 patients will generate about a million dollars worth of revenue for our organization."

Robertson's remarks were followed by several testimonial remarks from Rotarians whose families had been touched by hospice care. "It was a great blessing for us," said one. "I don't know what we would have done without hospice," a second listener chimed in.