Family Hospice & Palliative Care will be shutting down its 12-year-old residential hospice unit in Mt. Lebanon by the end of April, concentrating those overnight services at its Lawrenceville location.
The region’s largest hospice provider has operated 12-bed units for patients in the end stages of life at both locations since adding the hospice setting at its Canterbury Place long-term care facility in the city in 2012. Both units have become under-utilized and have typically only been about half-full, said Deborah Brodine, president of UPMC Community Provider Services. Family Hospice became part of the UPMC health care system through a merger agreement in 2015.
Ms. Brodine said concerns about inefficiency prompted the decision to close the Mt. Lebanon site and focus on the Lawrenceville location, as it is a more central location in the region and closer to the hospitals and cancer treatment that frequently serve as the source of referrals for residential hospice users.
Ms. Brodine said scaling back of residential hospice settings has been part of a national trend in recent years. Locally, Allegheny Health Network made a similar decision in January 2018, closing its nine-bed inpatient unit at West Penn Hospital. It was the AHN system’s only specialized setting for hospice patients, whose costs are most commonly covered by Medicare.
As was the case with AHN officials then, Ms. Brodine noted the primary need for and use of hospice is in people’s own homes — through nurses, aides and social workers assisting patients in the final stages of life and their family caregivers. Having under-utilized resources is an operating burden for the agency when trying to care for more than 500 hospice patients around Western Pennsylvania on a given day, she said.
“Across the country, hospice organizations have seen people do prefer to have their end-of-life experience at home,” Ms. Brodine said.
The Mt. Lebanon property on Moffett Street, which also serves as Family Hospice’s administrative headquarters, will be converted to another purpose that Ms. Brodine said UPMC is not ready to identify.
“We have a number of options we’re thinking about,” she said, stressing the property will not be sold. “I do expect we will utilize the facility for something that will benefit the community.”
She said Family Hospice has submitted a plan to Mt. Lebanon municipal officials for changes at nearby Asbury Heights, which is part of UPMC Senior Communities, that include housing the Family Hospice administrative offices. As part of the changes, greater use of hospice services is also envisioned at Asbury Heights, she said, although the setting will not be able to duplicate the Moffett Street location.
The residence that will take its last admissions April 28 was designed with prominent gardens, space for massage and art therapy, a meditation room, overnight lodging for visitors and other features to make it as comforting as possible for those staying in its private rooms. Such aspects are typically treasured by the loved ones of patients in hospice residences, which can also be tapped for respite care by caregivers feeling overwhelmed.
“It is a great place,” Ms. Brodine said. “It would be lovely if we could continue to offer those services, but it’s clearly not being utilized enough to make it manageable.”
The nurses and other patient care staff at the Mt. Lebanon hospice residence are being offered other positions within UPMC, although they will not necessarily be able to move to the Canterbury Place location to do similar work there due to its own staffing levels.
Gary Rotstein: grotstein@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1255.
First Published: March 20, 2019, 11:00 a.m.
Updated: March 20, 2019, 11:10 a.m.
