Heather Richter says she’s optimistic about the long-term prognosis for hospice and home health services in Juneau, a little more than two years after they were on life support when the agency that had provided them for 20 years suddenly shut down and sent officials into a lengthy struggle to establish a new program.
Richter, director of the Home Health and Hospice Program at Bartlett Regional Hospital, said 68 families have been participants since the hospital officially took over the program in July of 2023. Funding for the program, a key concern raised this spring due to a massive budget shortfall at the hospital, now appears more stable due to Juneau Assembly members supporting a five-year operating plan and support from the Juneau Community Foundation.
“We’re in the clear,” she said during a “Light Up a Life” Community Celebration hosted by the program at the hospital on Friday evening.
Pat McLear (left) and Taylor Dunn hang hand-decorated memorial ornaments on a Christmas tree during a “Light Up a Life” community celebration hosted by the hospital’s Home Health and Hospice program Friday evening. (Mark Sabbatini / Juneau Empire)
The event featured the lighting of a tree in the hospital’s main lobby decorated with ornaments hand-decorated by attendees in memorial to lost loved ones. Attendees also spoke to the crowd and among themselves about their experiences with home health and hospice programs when people close to them needed end-of-life care.
Pat McLear selected a heart-shaped ornament from those available and dedicated it to her parents, including her mother who was in a hospice program in Massachusetts, decorating it with a simple doodle that came spontaneously in the moment.
“I had a green marker and that’s how it came out, and I just put the first letter of each their names,” she said.
Juneau’s hospice program started in the 1980s, motivated by a group of women after a visit by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross who authored the bestselling book “On Death and Dying,” said Bob Urata, a doctor credited with helping establish and grow hospice care in Juneau, during remarks to the crowd. He said it was managed by a community group and he joined the program in 1987.
But some years later the program experienced financial difficulties due to a policy change that reduced Medicare reimbursements, which led to Catholic Community Services taking over the program after the turn of the millennium. More financial problems arose during the COVID-19 pandemic — as well as a lack of registered nursing staff — which resulted in the agency closing the program in October of 2022.
Hand-decorated memorial ornaments hang on a Christmas tree during a “Light Up a Life” community celebration hosted by the Bartlett Regional Hospital’s Home Health and Hospice program Friday evening. (Mark Sabbatini / Juneau Empire)
Bartlett would eventually take over the program nearly a year later, but in May listed home health and hospice services among six “non-core” programs targeted for cuts or elimination due to an ongoing deficit at the hospital of about $1 million a month dating back to the summer of 2020. In September the Assembly expressed their support for a plan submitted by Bartlett leaders with a five-year time frame to make the Home Health and Hospice program self-sufficient, with the possibility of needing up to $1.9 million from the city during that time.
Support from the Juneau Community Foundation is also helping cover some of the cost and additional funds are being raised through events such as Friday’s gathering.
One of the first patients in Bartlett’s Home Health and Hospice program was retired teacher Kathryn “Kit” Scribner, and at Friday’s event her daughter, Mandy Mallott, was among those sharing memories of that experience and others involving family members receiving end-of-life care. In the case of her mother, she needed care at about the same time Mallott said her family was displaced from her home by the glacial outburst flood in August of 2023 that damaged or destroyed dozens of homes.
“She ended up living a year and a week from that day,” Mallott said. “That journey, the ups and downs, I never thought she would live that long. There were a lot of days, honestly, where I thought it might be her last day or that we were entering that, and through all of that…hospice was there with us just helping us to navigate that journey with the best sort of calm and peace. One of the things I wanted to mention too that is so striking is that the care team that we have built here in Juneau with hospice is much like my mom’s demeanor — patient, brave, full of grace, full of just calm, trusting — it was something that was definitely felt for us.”
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.
Bob Urata (left), a doctor credited with helping establish and grow hospice care in Juneau, and Mandy Mallott, daughter of the one of the first patients in Bartlett Regional Hospital’s Home Health and Hospice program, address attendees at a “Light Up a Life” community celebration Friday evening at the hospital. (Mark Sabbatini / Juneau Empire)
