Gilchrist Center Baltimore Opens $15.3 Million Residential Hospice Center

Maryland-based Gilchrist Hospice Care will soon open doors to a new $15.3 million residential inpatient hospice facility in Baltimore. The William L. and Victorine Q. Adams Gilchrist Center Baltimore will provide inpatient and respite care to the area’s most underprivileged and underserved patients approaching the end of life.

The center’s construction was supported by philanthropic dollars, community donors and a $1.5 million commitment from the State of Maryland. The center will admit patients beginning at the end of October and early November. The 30,000-square-foot center spans 1.5 acres at the Stadium Place, a 30-acre housing community for low-income seniors. The two-story hospice facility has 18 private adult suites and four pediatric suites, each with a bathroom, storage and space for guests.

The new location replaces Gilchrist’s previous inpatient hospice center, the Joseph Richey House, which provided care for more than 30 years. The decision to rebuild and relocate came with the area’s growing need for hospice care, according to Catherine Hamel, president of the Gilchrist Center Baltimore and executive vice president Greater Baltimore Medical Center.

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“The people that we serve at the Gilchrist Center Baltimore are people who, for whatever reason, don’t have a home. We underwrite the cost of that care to the tune of about $1.4 million a year,” Hamel told Hospice News. “We are sitting at a time in history where the number of older people is increasing daily in ways that we’ve never seen before. We want to be able to continue to serve the community as the aging demographic continues to change.”

Nearly 8% of seniors in Maryland lived below the 2018 poverty line, which was an annual $11,880 in 2018, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Baltimore City is home to the highest percentage of the state’s overall population living below the federal poverty line, according to a report from Marylanders Against Poverty.

The center provides hospice services and room and board to patients at the end of life, regardless of their ability to pay. Roughly 70% of the center’s patients live below the median family income for Baltimore City, according to the hospice provider, with many patients experiencing homelessness, drug and alcohol addictions and behavioral health issues.

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The center aims to work within the senior living community to provide residents with a “true continuum of care,” according to Hamel.

Established in 1994, Gilchrist provides home- and facility-based hospice to about 950 patients annually across central Maryland. The nonprofit has three inpatient hospice centers in Towson, Howard County and Baltimore.

Maryland is a certificate of need state where demographics are fueling a growing demand for hospice. Seniors 60 and older will make up an estimated 22% of the state’s population by 2030, a 26% jump from 2012, according to U.S. Census Bureau projections. In Baltimore City alone, seniors 65 and older account for 13.6% of the population.

Hospice utilization among Medicare decedents in Maryland hit 47.6% in 2018, hovering close to the national average of 50.7% that year, according to the National Hospice & Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO). Utah ranked highest that year with a 60.5% hospice utilization rate.

The center also aims to bridge racial gaps in hospice utilization, particularly among Baltimore’s African American community, according to Shannon Wollman, chief philanthropy officer at the Gilchrist Center Baltimore.

“The African American community is the highest demographic in Baltimore, and we build strong relationships with a lot of the influencers: local hospitals, religious leaders, community leaders and local elected officials to promote the use of hospice,” said Wollman. “One of our biggest challenges is length of stay. We’re really hoping that as we become stronger community members as Gilchrist grows its relationships in the city with our new center, that we can introduce all of our services much earlier in the patient family care experience.”

Racial disparities in hospice care are not limited to Baltimore. Nationally, roughly 82% of Medicare decedents who elected hospice in 2018 were Caucasian, while only slightly more than 8% were African American, according to NHPCO.

Gilchrist anticipates saving the State of Maryland more than $6 million in health care costs each year by caring for underserved and homeless populations, according to Wollman.

“Our goal is to keep these patients who are mostly underserved or homeless, and to give them a place to die with dignity, keep them out of the hospital, keep them out of going into the emergency room, or dying on the street,” Wollman told Hospice News.

The center features a pediatric wing with a children’s playroom, a kitchen, dining and living room, family gathering areas, counseling rooms, multiple nursing stations, a chapel and a conference room. Therapeutic services offered include music therapy and a sensory room with audio and visual elements for meditation and reflection. Bereavement counseling is also available.

Gilchrist Center Baltimore additionally serves as a central hub for the provider’s interdisciplinary care teams, according to Hamel. The facility provides a central space for staff to collaborate. The ability to grow and house more staff and patients was an important consideration in the decision to build Hamel told Hospice News.

“We’re set to add on an additional eight beds, and we can add more home care teams to this neighborhood as well,” said Hamel. “An important component when we were thinking about how to build the building was what will we need in the future, and so it is scaled to be able to take care of more over time.”

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