Dear Friends of Hospice of Lansing and Ionia Area Hospice,
The Board of Directors is pleased to welcome you to the website of Hospice of Lansing and Ionia Area Hospice. Our website has been created to inform as well as educate. We have made it as user friendly as possible for patients and families facing life threatening illnesses, for people experiencing grief, for physicians and other clinicians, for those who wish to make contributions, and for anyone interested in issues related to end-of-life care.
In 1979, a group of remarkable volunteers launched Mid-Michigan’s first hospice and named it Hospice of Lansing. The volunteers were inspired by the tremendous success of Dr. Cicely Saunders in her work with the dying and their families in England. They were determined to create and maintain a hospice that was nonprofit, charitable, independent, community-based, and totally focused on comfort and kindness in its care of dying patients and their families.
In 1983, another group of volunteers founded Ionia Area Hospice. This was Mid-Michigan’s first rural hospice, and it was also nonprofit, independent, and community-based. Its outreach included many small communities and ones as large as Ionia and Portland. For ten years Ionia Area Hospice functioned entirely with volunteers. In 1993, its board decided to link hands with Hospice of Lansing, which had become licensed and Medicare certified. This bond has enabled both hospices’ eligible patients to have the Medicare Hospice Benefit, which covers most of the costs of hospice care. The merger of the two agencies has succeeded in many ways, but especially in the quality of care for our patients and families.
Hospice of Lansing and Ionia Area Hospice are now served by one Board of Directors. The board has strong commitment and reflects a wide range of skills. The board oversees policy making, financial management, and strategic planning for the organization and makes sure that the hospice remains true to its mission.
Our hospice now operates in three locations, serving ten counties. Its Lansing home hospice care service is conveniently located in a building on Legacy Parkway in south Lansing. Its Ionia home care service is based in a renovated facility on East Washington Street in Ionia. In addition to care provided in patients’ homes, we also care for patients in other care facilities like nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and adult foster care facilities.
The hospice also has a beautiful eight-suite residence in a 22-acre natural setting on Lansing’s Stoneleigh Drive. The Hospice of Lansing’s Stoneleigh Residence is available to those who cannot remain in their own homes, and its care is exceptional. Nurses are available round the clock to serve terminally ill patients with routine needs, as well as patients who are severely ill with complicated treatment needs.
Even though most of our patients are covered by Medicare, Medicaid, or other health insurers, we cannot afford to take care of them without donations from our friends. We ask you to do what you can to support our service on behalf of dying patients and their families. We are Mid-Michigan’s original hospices, community-based and independent, not funded by any health system. We stand on our own to help those who cannot help themselves. Please be as generous as you can. We will reward your kindness through kindness to others.
It is gratifying to realize that our wonderful organization has entered its 30th year. What a marvelous journey we have experienced in caring for thousands of terminally ill patients and their families. We hope that this website will be useful to you, will help spread the word about the excellence of our care, and will help us to keep growing in the years ahead. The board would like to thank Lisa Smith and Jilayne Phillips of Donovan and Smith for their creativity, vision, and skill in designing the website.
Sincerely,
John W. Person, President
Charles Blockett Jr., Secretary
Tony Benavides
Doug Chalgian
Mark Meadows
Rev. Penny Swartz
Lisa Lehman
Carol Barish