Madrone Hospice began in the early 1980s.

Madrone Hospice began in the early 1980s. A group of dedicated people, who ultimately became the first board of directors, began meeting on a regular basis in the conference room of the law office I then shared with Joe Correia and Larry Bacon. They were a diverse group, with backgrounds in medicine, business, pharmacy, law, banking, timber, government and other fields. Some of the old-timers reading this may know or remember people like Edna Barr, Mary Penberthy, Dan Girdner Jr., Dr. David Wilson, Roz Sumner, Katie Anderson, Mary Lou Smith, Dom Favero Jr., and me. (Not all of us are dead yet.)

In a sense, this group of people set out to do something similar to what the framers of the United States Constitution set out to do, although of course on a much smaller scale. To explain why I am making this rather grandiose comparison, let me give a little history of the evolution of the concept of hospice. The term “hospice” can be traced back to medieval times when it referred to a place of shelter and rest for weary or ill travelers on a long journey. The name was first applied to specialized care for dying patients by physician Dame Cicely Saunders, who began working with the terminally ill in 1948. In 1967 she went on to create the first modern hospice – St. Christopher’s Hospice – in London.

Dr. Saunders’ concept of hospice eventually made its way to the United States. A book entitled “On Death and Dying,” written by Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross was published in 1969 and became an international best seller. In the book, she makes a plea for home care as opposed to treatment in an institutional setting and argues that patients should have a choice and the ability to participate in the decisions that affect their destiny.

This caught the attention of the United States Congress. Hearings were conducted on the subject of death with dignity, and in 1982 Congress passed legislation to create a Medicare hospice benefit on a trial basis.

It was in this context that the folks meeting in my law office conference room were working in the early 1980s. Although the hospice concept in its modern sense was on people’s minds, it was still not much more than a concept. There was not a good existing model to learn from or borrow from. That is why I made the comparison of Madrone Hospice’s initial board to the framers of the U.S. Constitution.

Like the founding fathers, everyone had the same general idea of what they wanted to accomplish, but differing ideas of how it should be specifically structured. Our board had essentially two factions: One faction wanted the hospice to be a low-key, all volunteer organization limited to providing helpful and palliative services to patients and families. The other wanted a structured incorporated organization with a reliable revenue stream that would provide professional medical care in addition to volunteers going into the homes of dying patients to help them and their family members to work through it. They wanted an organization eligible to receive Medicare and private insurance funding.

Madrone Hospice took the latter approach. Edna Barr spent countless hours on her Macintosh computer creating an organizational structure: articles of incorporation, bylaws, job descriptions, procedures and the like. And she did it pretty much from scratch. She was our James Madison, so to speak. The Madrone Hospice model has been copied by other hospices throughout the state and nation.

In future instalments of this column, I will tell you how our hospice has evolved and what services Madrone Hospice can provide to you, your families and friends.