|
Good Shepherd Hospice is a non-profit organization that
was created in 2001 with the merger of Good Samaritan,
St. Charles and Mercy Hospices and represents a combined
thirty years of experience serving the community. It’s
mission is to expand and enhance healthcare at the end-of-life
for all individuals and their families living throughout
Long Island, while educating the community on the philosophy
and concept of hospice services. The hospice mission
also seeks to educate and promote the necessity for earlier
referrals to a hospice so the patient and family have
the ability to make informed decisions regarding care.
Through its Community Outreach programs Good Shepherd
Hospice continues to educate the community and professionals
in an attempt to eliminate barriers to hospice care and
develop linkages in the community supporting the mission.
Good Shepherd Hospice employs close to 225 staff members
and has a volunteer core of close to one hundred. Currently
the staff and volunteers are caring for up to 350 patients
and their families each day.
The close of 2011 represents ten full years of operations
for Good Shepherd Hospice serving the residents of Nassau
and Suffolk Counties facing the issues and crisis at
end of life. During these ten years we have successfully
merged three different cultures into one cohesive program.
The original goal, to consolidate what we can to achieve
a broader base of care, and thus expand the mission of
Hospice within Catholic Health Services of Long Island,
has been achieved. Since the beginning in January of
2001 we have walked with 25,000 individuals and their
families through life’s most difficult journey.
Where alone we may have provided less than 200,000 days
of care in our final separate years, together over the
past ten years we have provided 1,200,000 days of care
at the end of life.
|