FREE and OPEN to the public, our groups are led by a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and a Licensed Professional Counselor, both with many years of grief counseling experience. We meet on the last Wednesday of each month from 12pm-1pm at our office, located at 2528 Calder in Beaumont.

Upcoming meetings will be held as follows:

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

For more information please contact Melanie Ayres or Ashley Klamfoth at 409-835-8357.

We will be meeting on the last Wednesday of each month from 12pm-1pm. Please feel free to join us if you feel this is something that would be beneficial to you. Meeting days are as follows:

Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Please feel free to contact Melanie Ayres or Ashley Klamfoth if you have any questions. We can be reached at 409-835-8357.

Our new groups will meet the last Wednesday of each month from 12:00-1:00pm.

Our summer groups will meet:

Wednesday, July 27, 2011 12:00 – 1:00
Wednesday, August 31, 2011 12:00 – 1:00
Wednesday, September 28, 2011 12:00 – 1:00

Our groups are led by a licensed professional counselor with experience in grief and loss. We hope you will consider joining us if you feel this is an area you need help with.

For any additional questions please contact our Bereavement Coordinator, Melanie Ayres at 409-835-8357.

If you are interested and feel like being a volunteer for Compassion Hospice is a good fit for you, please call Melanie Ayres at 409-835-8357 for further information. Having great volunteers helps us ensure that our patients truly receive “care without compromise”.

Thank you so much for your interest and we look forward to hearing from you!

We understand that loss and grief are experienced in a number of different ways and we want to be there for you, no matter where you are in your grief process. We will discuss issues such as feelings associated with the loss, loss of role, types of grief, and answer any questions that you may regarding your own grief process.

Please join us this month on Wednesday, May 11 and Wednesday, May 25 at 2:00pm. We will be meeting at our office located at 2528 Calder in Beaumont.
Please feel free to call us at 409-835-8357 for directions or any additional questions you may have.

Led by a Licensed Professional Counselor with years of experience in helping people through their loss. It’s open to the  Southeast Texas community, whether your loved-one has been a patient of ours or not, at no charge. We will provide supportive compassionate care as long as you need it.

Meetings are at 2pm and for March are March 2nd, 16th and 30th. They’re in our office at 2528 Calder Ave. If you have any questions, please call us at 409-835-8357.

We’re looking forward to seeing you soon!

We’ve scheduled our annual memorial service and Tree of Lights Celebration for Thursday evening December 16th – we’ll begin gathering at 5pm and celebrate the lives of our patients and the Tree of Lights from 5:30-6:30. Stay tuned for more information!

Below is a couple of our favorite images from the recent Alzheimer’s Association Memory Walk 2010, be sure and check our Facebook page for more of the fun!

The Alzheimer’s Association Memory Walk® is the nation’s largest event to raise awareness and funds for Alzheimer care, support and research. Since 1989, Memory Walk has raised more than $300 million for the cause.

Memory Walk is a community event that joins friends, family and co-workers as they walk to end Alzheimer’s. Participants typically register in teams of 10-12 and fundraise using tools supported by the Alzheimer’s Association. Walks vary from one to three miles and are held in nearly 600 locations nationwide.

You can join us on our Compassion Hospice team page here; and you can conveniently make your tax-deductible donation for our team right here.

Wear your good tennis shoes!

National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization hopes that healthcare professionals and policy makers will take time to look at this and other recent studies that help provide a better understanding of both the cost and quality-of-life benefits associated with the hospice experience, including honoring a patient’s wish to be able to die at home.

The study, which was led by researchers at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, found that:

• 33.9 percent of the patients who disenrolled from hospice care were admitted to an emergency department, in contrast with only 3.1 percent of hospice patients.
• 39.8 percent of disenrolled patients were admitted to the hospital as an inpatient, in contrast with only 1.6 percent of hospice patients.
• Disenrolled patients spent an average of 19.3 days in the hospital, whereas hospice patients spent an average of 6.7 days.
• 9.6 percent of disenrolled patients died in the hospital, compared to only 0.2 percent of hospice patients.
• Costs of care for patients with cancer who disenrolled from hospice were nearly five times higher than for patients who remained with hospice.

“Impact of Hospice Disenrollment on Healthcare Use and Medical Expenditures for Patients with Cancer” is published in the October 1, 2010 issue of Journal of Clinical Oncology.

“This study illustrates the tangible value of hospice care to patients who want to die at home, with the support of the hospice interdisciplinary team, surrounded by family rather than in a hospital connected to machines. There are significant emotional and financial benefits to the patient, family and healthcare system when hospices are caring for people,” said J. Donald Schumacher, NHPCO president and CEO. “In my 30 years running a hospice, I heard time and time again from families that wanted to keep their dying loved one at home.”

“There are numerous reasons why a patient may disenroll from hospice, and while those factors were not part of this study, we are reminded of the importance of advising patients and families as to the potential toll that might accompany leaving hospice care prematurely. A toll that may be physical, emotional, and financial,” added Schumacher.

Wrote the study authors, “Policy makers have called for tightening eligibility restrictions for the MHB (Medicare Hospice Benefit) as part of a wider effort to reduce high Medicare expenditures; our results suggest that addressing hospice disenrollment may be an effective means of reducing Medicare expenditures for hospice users without restriction access to the MHB.”

Further recommendations suggest that oncologists explore outpatient palliative care services that offer multidisciplinary care, symptom control, and end-of-life planning expertise in a context that enables a patient and family to maintain contact with the oncology clinic.

In his plenary address at NHPCO’s “Developing the Continuum of Care” conference held in Boston on August 5, Dr. Schumacher encouraged all hospice providers to explore ways that they can offer “pre-hospice” palliative care services in their communities and work with other providers to ensure patients and families have the right care at the right time from diagnosis on through bereavement for family.

More than 1.5 million patients with life-limiting illness receive care every year from the nation’s hospices.

<i>via NHPCO.org</i>

The goals of palliative care are to improve the quality of a seriously ill person’s life and to support that person and their family during and after treatment. Sharing the same philosophy of hospice care which is usually provided in the final months of life, palliative care may be provided at any stage during a serious or life-limiting illness.

Researchers also found that when patients received palliative care services, they were also more likely to elect hospice services.

“With earlier referral to a hospice program, patients may receive care that results in better management of symptoms, leading to stabilization of their condition and prolonged survival,” wrote the authors of the study released Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. 

This new study adds to the body of evidence showing that many patients live longer with hospice and palliative care.

A 2007 study that looked at Medicare beneficiaries with some of the most common diagnoses leading to death, found that patients who received hospice services lived on average, 29 days longer than those who did not receive hospice care. This study, published in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management (March 2007) looked at 4,493 terminally ill patients with either congestive heart failure or cancer of the breast, colon, lung, pancreas, or prostate.

In an earlier study looking at patients with 16 of the most common terminal diagnoses, researchers found that hospice patients lived longer. On average, this ranged from 20 days for those with a diagnosis of gallbladder cancer to 69 days for the cohort of breast cancer patients (JPSM, September 2004).

“There’s an inaccurate perception among the American public that hospice means you’ve given up,” said J. Donald Schumacher, president and CEO of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. “Those of us who have worked in the field have seen firsthand how hospice and palliative care can improve the quality of and indeed prolong the lives of people receiving care.”

NHPCO encourages all families who are diagnosed with a serious illness to ask their healthcare providers about hospice and palliative care services.

“The time to learn about these services is before a person is in a medical crisis. Patients and families must learn about these options of care as soon as possible,” Schumacher added.

Both hospice and palliative care focus on helping a person with a serious or life-limiting illness by addressing issues causing physical or emotional pain, or suffering. Hospice and other palliative care providers have teams of people working together to provide care.

reprinted from: http://www.nhpco.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=5746