Suncoast Hospice is proud to be designated a GuideStar Exchange Gold Participant for our transparency. Our affiliates, Suncoast Hospice Foundation, AIDS Service Association of Pinellas, Inc. (ASAP) and Project GRACE also have this designation.
GuideStar is a national program that encourages transparency with nonprofits. The gold logo is the highest distinction in GuideStar’s system and indicates that an agency has provided up-to-date, comprehensive, accurate information about its mission, leadership, financials and the impact of its programs.
“We partner with the community to design and provide services needed. We’re so pleased to have this platform for communicating our progress,” said Rafael Sciullo, Suncoast Hospice president and CEO.
Kim Stangle, Suncoast Hospice Foundation executive director, added, “Our donors need to have complete confidence that their contributions are being used to carry out our mission of serving everyone regardless of their ability to pay”.
Visit guidestar.org to learn more and view our agencies’ profiles.
Want to help support our mission of care and services? Please make a donation online at suncoasthospicefoundation.org.
By Tracy Christner
Project GRACE executive director
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| Tracy Christner |
Very few of us want a state-of-the-art death. You know the kind – with high-tech, aggressive interventions, such as breathing machines and feeding tubes. These devices may keep you alive technically for weeks, months or even years. However, in some circumstances, such as a heart attack, many of us would want CPR. That's where the Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) program comes in.
POLST is designed to help individuals in the last stages of life express their wishes regarding life-sustaining treatment. Suncoast Hospice will be the first hospice in Florida to offer POLST to its patients. The pilot will begin this fall after staff has been trained by Project GRACE, the Suncoast Hospice affiliate leading this effort.
Why POLST Is Needed
Just imagine an elderly man (Mr. M) with advanced dementia living in a nursing home. His living will requests no CPR and no intensive care. He chose his daughter as his healthcare decision maker.
One Friday evening, Mr. M is found unresponsive with an irregular, weak pulse and extremely low blood pressure. The nursing home is unable to reach his daughter and emergency services are called. The paramedics arrive and Mr. M is resuscitated, intubated and transferred to the local hospital. His daughter learns what has happened and demands to know why his living will was not followed.
Completing a living will is often not enough to ensure that your wishes to have or limit medical treatment will be respected. Living wills are general statements of your preferences but need to be carried out through specific medical orders when the need arises. Without special arrangements, medical orders have limited authority outside of the institutions in which they are written. For example, a physician’s orders at the nursing home usually have no authority in the ambulance or hospital.
Mr. M needed a document with medical orders that were followed at each step of his care, from the nursing home to ambulance to emergency department to intensive care unit. That is what POLST does.
How POLST Works
POLST is an approach to end-of-life planning based on thoughtful, facilitated conversations between patients, loved ones and medical providers. It’s designed to ensure that seriously ill patients can choose the treatments they do and do not want based on their values, personal beliefs and current states of health.
POLST’s several advantages include:
• It’s signed by the healthcare provider. There’s no need for interpretation and translation because it’s an immediately actionable medical order.
• It’s easy to follow because it’s on a single-page, standardized form.
• Unlike DNR (do-not-resuscitate) orders, it addresses not just CPR but an entire range of life-sustaining interventions, such as IV fluids, antibiotics, feeding tubes and artificial breathing.
• It’s transportable. It remains in the patient’s chart and travels with the patient. It’s recognized and honored across all treatment settings.
POLST Provides Peace of Mind
We believe POLST to be the best tool to help our patients and their families achieve peace of mind through shared and informed medical decision making.
Just imagine if Mr. M and his physician had completed a POLST form with orders indicating “Do Not Attempt Resuscitation, Comfort Measures Only and Do Not Transfer to Hospital for Life-Sustaining Treatment.” The covering physician and daughter, who agree with the POLST orders, are called. The daughter understands that her father would be transferred to the hospital if his comfort needs cannot be met at the nursing home. The next morning, Mr. M dies in comfort at the nursing home surrounded by his daughter, other family members and the staff who know him well.
For more information on POLST or Project GRACE, visit www.projectgrace.org/POLST or call (727) 536-7364. You may also read more about POLST in Suncoast Hospice’s recent article in Tampa Bay Medical News.
By Karen Van De Putte
Suncoast Hospice Foundation’s Planned Giving Director
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| Karen Van De Putte |
Suncoast Hospice is a nonprofit, community hospice that’s committed to providing expert, compassionate care and services to patients and families as they face one of life’s most difficult journeys. Our Suncoast Hospice Foundation works to raise funds needed to serve our community. Estate planning (or planned giving) is one of the ways in which people can give to our foundation in support of Suncoast Hospice.
Through planned giving, you can make a significant gift in the future, which won’t impact you financially now. Some examples of how you can include Suncoast Hospice in your estate plan are:
• Include Suncoast Hospice in your will or trust. If you don’t have an estate plan in place, we can help you get started with it. If you already have one in place, you can do a codicil to your will or amendment to your trust that adds a bequest to Suncoast Hospice.
• Charitable gift annuity. You can fund a charitable gift annuity now and then receive income guaranteed for the rest of your life. If there is anything left over at the end of your life, that amount stays with Suncoast Hospice. Rates of return are based on your age, and we can help you find out what rate you would receive at your age.
• Beneficiary designation. You can make Suncoast Hospice a beneficiary or partial beneficiary of your IRA, life insurance policy or investment, bank or money market account. You can usually do this with a simple, one-page beneficiary designation form, which you can request from your institution.
When you let us know you’ve made a planned gift to our foundation, you’ll become a member of our Parker Legacy Guild, which includes having your name put on our guild donor wall (with your permission) and an invitation for you and a guest to attend our annual, springtime Celebration of Caring dinner.
Thanks to all who have supported the Suncoast Hospice mission.
If you’d like more information on or need assistance with planned giving, please call (727) 523-3422.
You’re also invited to join us at our next panel discussion covering estate planning and other topics on Aug. 5 from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. at Suncoast Hospice’s Mary J. Labyak community service center, Garden House, in Clearwater. RSVP to Suzanne Pace at (727) 523-3417 or suzannepace@thehospice.org.
