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Lowcountry’s first hospice center nears debut
By Dennis Quick
Senior Staff Writer
Hospice of Charleston Inc. is preparing to open the tri-county area’s first in-patient hospice facility.
The 20,000-square-foot facility on Wando Park Boulevard in Mount Pleasant is slated to open June 1 if the state Department of Health and Environmental Control completes its inspections by then, said Kit Cosgrove, Hospice of Charleston’s executive director.
The center, which provides end-of-life care, accommodates 20 hospice patients at a time for a patient’s last seven to 10 days.
The tri-county area’s growing population triggered the demand for the facility, Cosgrove said.
“People coming into this community asked why we didn’t have a hospice center,” she said.
Although Hospice of Charleston had been envisioning a Lowcountry hospice center since 1990, it was only four years ago that DHEC provided regulations supporting the facility, Cosgrove said.
Hospice of Charleston has raised
$3.1 million toward the $5.3 million hospice center. Area hospitals contributed a total of $500,000.
South Carolina has about half a dozen hospice centers, Cosgrove said.
Mount Pleasant-based Stubbs Muldrow Herin Architects Inc. designed the center, which has the look of a sprawling, ranch-style home. Numerous windows provide plenty of natural sunlight. The interior includes wide, carpeted hallways and a color scheme of pale earth tones.
A live oak and other trees shade the property. There will be a garden for meditating.
“It’s peaceful here,” Cosgrove said.
The center’s purpose is to make the final days for a terminally ill patient as comfortable as possible, not just for the patient, but also for the patient’s family members.
The hallways are lined with couches and soft chairs for friends and family members. Each of the 20 patient rooms has a television, a remote-control-adjustable bed and a window seat.
The rooms can also accommodate two guests who want to sleep over. Each room is furnished with a small sofa with a pullout bed.
There is a kitchen and dining room for family gatherings, a large living room with a television set and a loft where children can play.
The point is to make the center as home-like as possible.
Cosgrove got her inspiration for the center’s atmosphere from the Grove Park Inn Resort & Spa in Asheville, N.C., where her terminally ill mother spent her last days, she said. The inn became home for Cosgrove’s family members as well as her mother.
In addition to providing palliative care, the new hospice center tends to spiritual and religious needs through an in-house chapel. Clergy and social workers will help patients and their families cope with the death.
The center will have a staff of 30 working different shifts. Staff members will engage with the patients’ families as much or as little as the family members want, Cosgrove said.
She emphasized that the center aims to ease people’s concerns about death.
“We don’t want people to be afraid of death,” she explained. “Dying is what we all have to do, and we’re trying to show people how to do it.”
Dennis Quick covers health and wellness for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@charlestonbusiness.com.
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