Grande Ronde Hospital and Clinics closing Hospice care program
By Paul Hall on Tuesday, June 1st, 2021 in Northeastern Oregon News Northeastern Oregon Top Stories
LA GRANDE – (Information provided by Grande Ronde Hospital) Grande Ronde Hospital and Clinics (GRH) will close its Hospice care program in June 2021. We are working with other local hospice caregivers in our community to ensure a smooth and professional transition over the next few weeks to these alternative caregivers. With more than one Hospice program in our community, we are confident this transition will be a seamless move for the very limited patients we currently have in our care.
This change does not affect our Home Health Care Services program, which is thriving and will continue to serve the community.
Many considerations were taken into account before the final decision was made by the Board of Trustees during its May 2021 meeting, according to President and CEO Jeremy Davis.
“Our community is not exempt from the serious national shortage on healthcare workers. Over the past year, it has become increasingly difficult to find nursing staff to support our hospice program. Director of Home Care Services Selina Shaffer and her team have worked hard to recruit and keep the program alive. On behalf of the organization, I appreciate the exhaustive efforts they have made,” says Davis. Shaffer echoed those sentiments, adding that when the needed workforce supply began to wane over the past year, she realized she had to look beyond options to continue the program. “It was not a recommendation that we made lightly, as we have provided this service since the 1980s. Over the past year, however, the fallout from COVID-19 has changed the workforce landscape and we are no longer immune to that reality in Union County. At some point, we had to acknowledge that. We also knew this change would allow us to focus our efforts on providing the much needed Home Health Care that our patients and community have come to expect from us. We set very high standards for the care we provide with all of our service lines and clinics at GRH, and we intend to keep those standards in our Home Health Care Services program,” says Shaffer.
