Late last week Hopewell House, a Southwest Portland hospice center forced to closed three years ago, reopened and admitted its first new resident.
“This monumental,” said Lesley Sacks, the executive director. “We put in a lot of energy to get to this day. And now the real work begins again.”
Located in a historic home in a tranquil setting in the Hillsdale neighborhood, Hopewell House opened in 1987 and was the first free-standing residential hospice in Oregon. More than 10,000 people have died there.
Ownership of the house changed three time. In the fall of 2019, Legacy Health Systems, the final owner, decided that operating it was no longer financially feasible. Because it was run as a general in-patient hospice, rules required a full pharmacy as well as salaries for a physician and a 24-hour staff of registered nurses. The closure led to more than 2,000 people signing a petition to save Hopewell House. That gave birth to Friends of Hopewell House, a nonprofit formed to raise money to buy the building from Legacy. The group quickly raised $2 million and hired a consultant to come up with a plan that would allow the hospice to survive. The facility and all the rooms were updated.
Hopewell House is no longer a Medicare designated facility or in-patient hospice. Hopewell House is now a residential facility, operating more like the patient’s home.
Sacks said the facility had 12 rooms, 24 employees, including registered nurses, licensed practical nurses and certified nursing assistants. There are no doctors on staff. Hospice trained caregivers will come to Hopewell House to work with patients, much like they would if the patient was living in their own home. That means the patient rents a room at Hopewell House, set now at $575 a day. The organization continues to raise money to help with people cannot afford that rate.
Hopewell House is working with hospitals and hospice agencies and getting referral calls from people who want a room where they can die.
“Everyone wants to die in their home in their bed,” said John Larkin a Hopewell House board member and long-time volunteer. “That’s very rare.”
He said people who were dying often ended up at the hospital, primarily for pain management. Others may be at home but are cared for by family members.
“At home with a hospice worker checks in every week or two and a caregiver comes by a couple times a week,” Larkin said. “The rest of the time the care is provided by the family.”
Hopewell House, Larkin said, is an alternative to the hospital.
“And when it’s overwhelming for a family to be the caregiver 24-hours a day we become the patient’s home,” he said. “We provide the care, and the patient’s hospice team comes here. The family is a family again, not caregivers, which can lead to burnout. While $575 a day seems expensive, it’s cheaper than a hospital bed.”
He said people who moved to Hopewell House in the late stages of life might be there for days or just a few weeks.
“At the beginning of life society and the medical world offers all kinds of support,” he said. “That’s not the case at the end of life. We don’t deal with death until it is in our face.”
Dying in a hospital bed, he said, is to exist in a clinical world, in a system designed to cure people
“What we provide is compassionate care for the resident with specially trained people,” he said.
Hopewell House volunteers offer bedside feeding, and what is called quality of life support. A patient could be taken from a room to spend time in the garden, have a book read to them, or visit with family pets.
“And family members can come here and spend time with their family member in a room” he said., “Not the last precious days spent on the floor of a hospital or being overwhelmed at home.”
— Tom Hallman Jr
503-221-8224; thallman@oregonian.com; @thallmanjr
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