Hospice Plans Center Near Sumerduck

Appointed to the board last winter, Niles had friends and an older sister who had received hospice care during the last days of their lives.

So the retired 85-year-old lawyer already understood and valued the organization's work.

Niles also knew about Hospice of the Rapidan's frustrating search for a place to build a center to serve Fauquier, Culpeper, Madison, Orange and Rappahannock counties.

"I knew they had been desperately trying to get land in other places, and there was opposition from residents," said Niles, speaking of his decision to give land to the Culpeper-based nonprofit. "I know what a hospice does. It's just a real good thing."

Hospice Executive Director Kathy Clements and her colleagues never saw the donation coming.

"It was a big surprise," Clements said of Niles' land offer to the hospice board, which meets in Culpeper.

Zoned for agricultural, the wooded 14.6-acre site, part of a 200-acre farm that Niles and his wife Betty own, fronts Royalls Mill Road.

The couple live on a nearby 140-acre farm along the Rappahannock River.

Hospice of the Rapidan soon will file a special-exception permit request with Fauquier's community development department for a two-story residential-style building that would include up to 10 beds for patients.

The center also would include office space, meeting space for counseling family members, a kitchen and a dining room.

A floor plan submitted to the county of a hospice the proposed Sumerduck center would resemble shows a chapel.

Fauquier's special-exception permit review involves a public hearing before the county planning commission and board of supervisors. The commission makes recommendations to the board on land-use matters. The board makes the final decision.

Established in 1983, Hospice of the Rapidan has no care center. It staff and volunteers visit patients in their homes.

Among other things, the proposed center would enable staff and volunteer to give patients a level of care that is unavailable to many of them in their homes.

It would provide care for people with six months or less to live, based on a doctor's "best medical judgment," Clements said. "We can have patients under our care for longer."

Many misunderstand hospice's mission, she said.

"One of the misconceptions about hospice care is it's only for cancer," she said. "But it's for illnesses like heart disease, lung disease, AIDS, pediatric cases — anybody with a terminal diagnosis."

Another misconception is that hospices provide patients "curative" treatment.

"The focus is on comfort, not curative," said Nancy O'Connell, Hospice of the Rapidan's community relations director.

"It's all about the patient," O'Connell said of the approach. "Whatever we can do for the patient is what we're going to try to do."

The Rapidan hospice serves about 300 patients annually, about half of whom live in Fauquier, Clements said.

The need for a care center for the organization's five-county service area continues to grow, hospice board member Neil Mairs said.

"The community is growing old," said Mairs, an executive director who lives in Culpeper. "A study done in 2002 [found] there are over 6,000 people in our service area over 60 years old living alone."

Terminally ill people who live alone eventually cannot care for themselves, Mairs said.

"Who will take care of them?" he said. "The choices are to tough it out at home or go to a hospital. A hospital is not a place where most choose to go" to die.

Four or five years ago the nonprofit began looking for a site, she said.

It focused its search on Culpeper, Clements said.

Hospice had filed an application with Culpeper County for a 10-acre site, but withdrew it because neighbors complained that the center would create "a lot of traffic," the executive director said.

It also had a contract on 10 acres near Remington, but the soils couldn't handle a drainfield to treat the wastewater a center would generate, Clements said.

The Sumerduck site would support a drainfield to meet the center's needs, she said.

It also would provide the rural, "peaceful" setting suited for a care center, according to Clements.

The Culpeper hospice has 30 paid workers and about 100 volunteers. At least two nurses would staff the Sumerduck center around the clock. Most of the administrative staff would remain in Culpeper, O'Connell said.

The Rapidan hospice put development costs for a care center at $3.5 million (including $200,000 to $300,000 for land) and operating expenses at $450,000 annually.

E-mail the reporter: ddelrosso@timespapers.com