St. Anthony’s Hospice is beginning a fundraising campaign, its first in more than a dozen years, with a goal to underwrite its palliative care and bereavement and grief counseling services.
Palliative care, which occurs before a patient receives hospice care, and bereavement and grief counseling, which assists family members after death, are now the norm for hospice care organizations. Neither are eligible to be reimbursable through Medicare, said St. Anthony’s Hospice Executive Director Kendra Marsh.
The organization added a full-time bereavement counselor in 2021 and began offering palliative care in 2019, Marsh said.
Marsh, along with board chair Jack Hogan and board member Mark Chumbler, say that the goal of the fundraising campaign is to underwrite the cost of its palliative care and the bereavement and grief counseling services.
Palliative care costs are about $207,000 per year, and they don’t have an exact figure for grief and bereavement costs, but estimate it at $150,000.
Chumbler said the organization started in 1982 through the community’s charitable giving. Four years later, its services became eligible for Medicare funding, and it operated through gifts and Medicare, breaking even until about 2010, before making profits throughout the 2010s.
In 1989, St. Anthony’s began work with patients in Union County, and in 1992, started in Webster County.
Rising costs after the COVID-19 pandemic caused the organization to incur its first operational loss in 2021, Chumbler said.
Those post-pandemic costs are continuing to take a toll on St. Anthony’s, especially those related to employees. Costs associated with nurses have increased 30%, but Medicare reimbursement has only increased 6% total the past three years, Chumbler said.
Additionally, the number of patients the organization serves has gone up and will continue to increase as baby boomers reach retirement age and beyond. Marsh said St. Anthony’s provides palliative care to about 300 patients per year and hospice care to about 500 per year.
Palliative care focuses on providing relief of the symptoms and stresses that patients and families experience with a serious illness, according to the St. Anthony’s Hospice website.
The organization was recently awarded Hospice Honors Elite designation, which recognizes the top 2% of all hospices in the country for quality care. Chumbler said the local hospice was ranked in the top 100 out of 5,000 in the nation.
That’s like being the #7 team in the country in the college basketball rankings, said Hogan.
Current Executive Director Kendra Marsh said the hospice hasn’t asked for money from the community in years because it was raising enough from memorial gifts made to the hospice after a person died. The hospice is asking for people who give to consider a three-year commitment so that it’s on secure footing, Chumbler said.
Tax-deductible donations can be made at the website, www.stanthonyshospice.org; via mail with a check sent to its office at 2410 S. Green St., or in person.
