By Lisa Reisman, CT Insider Correspondent
BRANFORD — At 98, Joan Prum heard the word hospice and imagined someone infirm and bed-ridden. Then she heard former president Jimmy Carter had opted for home hospice care.
“It certainly made it the thing to do,” Prum, a Connecticut Hospice home care patient, told Dr. John LaPook in a segment featuring the Branford nonprofit on a recent national broadcast of CBS Evening News.
While nursing homes, assisted facilities, and places like CT Hospice provide hospice care, defined as a clinical determination that life expectancy is six months or less, about 99 percent among them Jimmy Carter and Joan Prum, choose to receive services at home, according to the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization.
CT Hospice CEO Barbara Pearce said CBS Evening News reached out this summer ahead of the 39th president’s 100th birthday. “They were planning a story on the shifting mindset on hospice care for America’s growing elderly population, and they wanted to come to Branford because we were the first hospice in America,” she said.
To Pearce’s mind, CBS’ choice to spotlight CT Hospice as the face of the hospice field was a sound one. “We’re the mothership,” she said, of the Double Beach facility that celebrated its 50th anniversary last September. “We’re the one that people look to and visit from around the country and around the world to see how cutting-edge, end-of-life care is delivered.”
From its very beginning, CT Hospice has been about “honoring life til the very end, as opposed to prolonging life at all costs,” Pearce said.
That means, for the patient and their family, Pearce told CBS, “sitting down at the very beginning and saying what are your goals of care, what do you want your life to look like in the next few months, and how can we help.”
As “the mothership,” CT Hospice has been at the forefront of national discussions on not just the value of early enrollment into hospice care, but also the image of hospice, as well as conditions for enrollment and payment, Pearce said.
It recently launched an innovative dementia care program called the GUIDE Model (Guiding an Improved Dementia Experience) that’s aimed at empowering both caregiver and patient by providing the tools for better quality of life and optimal care, according to a Sept. 26 CT Hospice press release.
For Prum, who still cooks and can mostly navigate her apartment on her own, the safety and social engagement afforded by home hospice care means more time with her eight grandchildren, whom she called “spectacular,” and, it seems, a new lease on life.
“I’m not over yet,” Prum told CBS. “I’m not through.”
“[Jimmy Carter] has given everybody permission to consider hospice care as a reasonable option that doesn’t shorten their life but does increase their comfort and fulfillment,” Pearce said.
“Our role in honoring life in its final chapter is such an important message for people to receive and understand, and we thank CBS for highlighting that in their coverage,” she added.
For more information visit www.hospice.com
