Construction is underway for Caldwell Hospice and Palliative Care's additional facility on a 64-acre parcel of land at 526 Pine Mountain Road in Hudson, NC. Its Kirkwood facility--which includes the first free-standing hospice patient care unit in North Carolina--will remain the primary headquarters.

Caldwell Hospice is constructing a 15,135 square-foot, 12-bed patient care unit. Once completed, Caldwell Hospice will have a total of 18 beds at its two locations. With the number of beds tripled, Caldwell Hospice can then include residential care for hospice patients who can no longer adequately care for themselves but do not have someone who can care for them 24 hours a day. Residential care is a long-awaited addition to its services. Caldwell Hospice will continue to offer acute care (pain and symptom management) to hospice patients. With the additional beds, access to the best possible inpatient hospice care will be ensured for patients in Caldwell County and in Alexander, Burke, Catawba, Watauga, and Wilkes counties.

The new patient care unit will be modeled after Kirkwood, a Lenoir landmark. The facility will include 12 private rooms with outdoor patios, a family living and dining area, family kitchen, meditation chapel, children's play room, central nurses' station, two sunrooms, and a landscaped central courtyard and garden.

Caldwell Hospice is constructing an 11,845 square-foot multi-purpose building to serve as the Hospice professional center. It, too, is modeled after Kirkwood, architecturally. A breezeway will connect it to the patient care unit.
Once construction is completed, clinical and patient care support staff currently in Granite Falls rented space, along with other patient care support staff now located at Kirkwood, will relocate to the professional center. The professional center will include community meeting space for education and information programs. The additional building will relieve Kirkwood's overcrowded facilities, where no available space for expansion or renovation exists.

Completion of the project is anticipated for late spring 2010. Caldwell Hospice was required to provide documentation-a Certificate of Need-to the State of North Carolina for its approval, prior to designing the additional facility and purchasing the property.

In the Certificate of Need, Caldwell Hospice made its case that growth and demand for hospice services guided the decision to expand the number of patient care unit beds and address the glaring need for additional space to house its homecare staff. When the patient care unit at Kirkwood was constructed in 1989, Caldwell Hospice was serving 20 patients per day; 20 years later, the organization serves more than 120 hospice patients daily. Looking to the future, the percentage of Caldwell County residents age 65 and older is predicted to increase 36% from 1996 through 2020.

To date, local companies comprise 92% of the total construction dollars involved in the project.

"Caldwell Hospice and Palliative Care welcomes this opportunity to grow our resources for the community," Executive Director Cathy Swanson said. "We are committed to bringing quality end-of-life care to patients and their families."

A Brief Timeline:

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