By: Sarah Ruttle, KCH Director of Communications & Strategic Funding
For 45 years, Kansas City Hospice & Palliative Care (KCH) has been proud to lead the way as the area’s nonprofit, quality-first hospice provider. We came out of the gate strong back in 1980, but there’s been a lot of growth, a lot of pivoting, a lot of programming based on what the community tells us it needs. That’s the beauty of being local: you can pivot when and how your community needs you to. And that’s at the very core of our organization’s history – and future.
How It Started
When Kansas City Hospice served its first patient on November 3, 1980, the Kansas City area had not yet seen formalized hospice care and it would be two full years before Congress established the Medicare Hospice Benefit. Privatized consumer-driven healthcare models wouldn’t hit their stride for a full decade – revealing the many benefits of a nonprofit model. In our early years, Kansas City Hospice & Palliative Care was a pioneer for methods that are now considered standards of care:
- Within our first year of service, we trained three groups of hospice volunteers who supported the work of our seven professional team members. Today, 360 trained volunteers provide 11% of Kansas City Hospice direct patient care hours, proudly surpassing the Medicare requirement of 5%.
- Even prior to incorporating, we took a collaborative approach to operations – forming as an innovative partnership between four area hospitals. In 1987 we expanded our partnerships with long-term care facilities and today, we thrive on the valued partnerships of dozens of hospitals, medical clinics, physician offices, long-term care facilities, and community organizations across our 12-county, two-state service area.
- We rounded out our first decade by establishing a Fund Development Department, entering into an era of sophisticated fundraising and stakeholder-building that has ensured we maintain our nonprofit status. This addition allowed us to expand services that meet our mission and supported sustainable growth, becoming a provider for more than 5,600 patients annually.
Broadening Our Care
KCH formed a mission statement, which was revised in 2019 to better reflect our broadened scope of services. Today, our mission fully embraces what it means to provide expert care, peace of mind, comfort, guidance, and hope to people who are affected by serious illness or by grief.
This broadening of care included many key milestones:
1989 – Created Carousel Pediatric Care, the first – and still only – pediatric hospice program in the region with a fully trained and dedicated multidisciplinary team. In 2001 we expanded Carousel to also serve families perinatally.
1996 – Introduced Camp Carousel, to provide grief support and peer activities for siblings and family members who have lost someone close to them.
2003 – Changed our name to include “& Palliative Care,” reflecting our widened scope of care.
2006 – Opened the doors of Kansas City Hospice HouseTM, a freestanding, homelike inpatient care facility. Also developed a clinical counseling program, then called Passages, to meet the mental health needs of grieving adults.
2009 – Solace House Center for Grief and Healing joined the KCH family of services, expanding our grief support to everyone in the community, including children and families who have lost a loved one suddenly or unexpectedly.
2010 – Camp Erin was added as our second grief support camp, specifically serving older kids and teens.
2015 – NorthCare Hospice & Palliative Care at North Kansas City Hospital became a subsidiary of KCH and merged with KCH as NorthCare Hospice House in 2017, marking the opening of our second inpatient hospice house.
2022 – Revised our palliative care services to a community-based model to better align with patient needs and improve the program’s long-term sustainability.
Innovating Care
As a provider of end-of-life care, hope for us does not necessarily lie in recovery; rather, it lies in ensuring the best quality of life for people in our care. KCH’s consistent success in achieving this has been dependent on our ability to innovate and be a leader for change.
Leading with change has ushered in a variety of unique initiatives over the past two decades. From developing a Palliative Medicine Fellowship program in 2005, becoming a national We Honor Veterans program partner in 2013 (and achieving Level 4 partnership in 2023), to hosting one of the first COVID19 vaccination clinics in January 2021, forming our first-ever Employee Resource Group in 2020 – focused on Belonging & Equal Access- and significantly expanding our grief support services to include school-based services, specialized counseling for children, and additional caregiver support.
People You Know. Care You Trust.
Today KCH is still a nonprofit, and still locally managed. We’re still very proudly providing the same expert, compassionate care to everyone in our community who needs it, regardless of their financial resources or complexity of need. It’s an approach to care driven by our vision that each person in our community is valued from life through death and each family is supported in their grief.
After 45 years of providing end-of-life care to the greater Kansas City community, we know the end of a person’s life is a significant time.
For the families Kansas City Hospice & Palliative Care has had the privilege to serve, this precious time is one of life’s most meaningful milestones. As we look to the years ahead we’ll continue to lead the way. We’ll always put patients and families first. We’ll always provide the very best in care.
Posted in Hospice Care, Kansas City Hospice, Luminary Blog