When Victoria Crenshaw cared for family members at home at the end of their lives, she remembers picking up the phone at 2 a.m. and calling hospice care services with questions about pain medication.
“You’re there, by yourself, trying to make decisions,” she said. “Does this person need more pain medication, or am I giving them too much, that their respiration will stop and they die? Am I killing them? Or, am I making them comfortable?”
Relieving that pressure for other families is one thing Crenshaw looks forward to as the executive director of Dozoretz Hospice House of Hampton Roads, the region’s first freestanding hospice under construction on 2½ acres in the Red Mill area of Virginia Beach. The city donated the land.
Dedicated hospice care was identified as a regional need in Old Dominion University’s 2023 State of the Region report in October. It said Hampton Roads appears to be the largest metropolitan statistical area in the country without a freestanding hospice house.
The report cited a 2020 study showing Hampton Roads needs at least 45 beds to serve the almost 7,000 people who need end-of-life care annually in the region. Dozoretz, a nonprofit organization, is expected to begin taking residents early in the spring and will have 12 beds.
The roughly $10 million project, which will also offer extended bereavement services to family members, will have two six-bed wards, Crenshaw said. A facility with 16 beds or more requires a state certificate of need, which she said is difficult to obtain.
“When you go to a more intimate, 12-bed hospice house, you’re focused on one thing: comfort, dignity — anything and everything that you can do to make that person have an appropriate passing,” said David Abraham, the CEO of Beth Sholom Village, a senior living provider.
Beth Sholom and Westminster-Canterbury on Chesapeake Bay, a senior living community where Crenshaw is the senior vice president for health, have partnered to run day-to-day operations for the Dozoretz Hospice House. All three organizations are nonprofit groups with independent boards, and the services Beth Sholom and Westminster-Canterbury provide will operate under the direction of the Dozoretz board, Abraham and Crenshaw said.
Hospice care focuses on providing the best possible quality of life for people given an incurable diagnosis, typically when they have less than six months to live. There are a few different types of hospice stays, but most people who go into full-time hospice care will be there a short time, Abraham said.
Patients may be transferred to hospice care for pain management after being stabilized at a hospital, a stay usually around three days, he said. Or, temporary hospice or respite care may be needed when home caregivers need a break, including for their own short-term medical needs or for travel. Residential end-of-life care is for when family members are not available at all or when they have been providing care but can’t do it any longer.
For those who live out their days at home, hospice home care services rarely provide round-the-clock care. Instead, family members often become full-time caregivers.
“You’re kind of on your own,” Crenshaw said. “Whereas if someone’s in the Hospice House, there is 24-hour nurse support that can say, ‘This is what we’re going to do and why. Relax. Your loved one is comfortable. Sit here and just hold their hand. You don’t have to worry about it, because the experts are taking care of the things they do best.’”
Katrina Dix, 757-222-5155, katrina.dix@virginiamedia.com
