Mercy Hospice House was renamed Garden B after the for-profit arm of CommonSpirit Health Network, Health at Home, assumed responsibility for outpatient hospice services.
The name change was required by state regulations, according to Wendy Hockett, the Health at Home representative who spoke with local hospice volunteers during a meeting Wednesday at the hospice offices in Three Springs.
Because Mercy Hospital no longer holds Colorado’s hospice license, the building can no longer legally be called a “hospice house,” she said. The hospice license is now held by CommonSpirit Health at Home.
The hospice team will continues to care for patients who are in one of the eight Garden B beds, but Mercy Hospital nurses, trained in both hospice and non-hospice care, will also provide bedside care, she said.
The meeting marked the first face-to-face discussion between CommonSpirit representatives and hospice volunteers since the structural oversight changes that briefly shut Mercy Hospice House last fall.
Volunteers used the meeting to voice frustration over what several described as a lack of transparency surrounding operational changes that accompanied the transition.
“I’m angry,” one volunteer said. Others expressed disappointment over the loss of what they described as the hospice house’s identity and concerns about communication during the transition.
“This community invested in hospice house,” another volunteer said.
Much of Wednesday’s meeting focused on confusion over the transition. More than an hour was spent clarifying the chain of command, volunteers’ status and which branch of CommonSpirit oversees various aspects of hospice care. Some had heard that the volunteer program had been shuttered
“It is unequivocally false that CommonSpirit Health at Home is terminating its volunteer program,” Lindsay Radford, CommonSpirit spokesperson said in an email to The Durango Herald earlier this month. “In fact, our commitment to volunteer support is strengthening: we’ve hired a new Volunteer Coordinator, and active recruitment for new volunteers is underway.”
Volunteers will continue serving outpatient hospice patients after completing Colorado licensing requirements, she said.
Health at Home described the volunteer program as “fully operational,” though some volunteers at Wednesday’s meeting said they still have not been cleared to see patients.
Others said they had continued serving patients without completing required state certifications, in addition to reports of outdated hospice triage phone numbers.
Hockett said she hopes the confusion clears up as the transition and changes are hammered out.
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