The Hospice Hub is for those facing a progressive, life-limiting illness with a prognosis of 6 months or less as well as their families and caregivers. The Hospice Hub serves anyone who is at the end stage of a progressive disease such as cancer, COPD, dementia, heart failure or frailty and who require support for quality of life and unmet needs.

The Hospice Hub serves Perth, Smiths Falls, Portland, Westport and surrounding areas. We serve the same community as the Perth and Smiths Falls District Hospital.

We are creating The Hospice Hub to address the lack of coordinated end of life care and bereavement support in our community. It will be a ‘one-stop shop’ where patients and families can access clinical and compassionate care and receive support navigating the health care system at the end of life.

The Hospice Hub will connect patients, families and caregivers to the most appropriate provider, service or agency to ease the transitions through end of life and bereavement.

Palliative care is an approach to care which can be delivered alongside curative treatments, at any point in the illness trajectory where there are Quality of Life issues or unmet needs.

Hospice care is a philosophy of comfort care for the end of life specifically, and palliative care is a part of hospice care. Typically it is delivered at home or in a home-like environment.

End of life is generally considered the last 6 months of life.

The Perth & Smiths Falls Hospital is an advocate for Hospice Palliative Care. Unfortunately, with the acute care crisis in hospitals, they are unable at this time to house dedicated, funded palliative care suites. PSFDH offers a palliative care consultation service to provide patients anywhere in the hospital with appropriate medical care when dying. While this does not replace Hospice beds, it is a common and standard approach to Hospice Palliative care within a Hospital setting. PSFDH has shown tremendous support for The Hospice Hub and the goal of actualizing the 4 Hospice beds allocated to this region.

The Hospice Hub would like to see the 4 hospice beds allocated to our area by the Ministry of Health in 2016 become fully operational. We want the community to have access to 4 beds providing Gold Standard* hospice care. Given the demographics and the central location to our catchment area, Perth and Smiths Falls are ideally situated; they have a very high seniors population with 39.2% of the Town of Perth being over the age of 65.

The development of a Hospice Residence or the availability of Hospice beds and their location will depend on the involvement of the community and opportunities that arise.

*Gold Standards as defined by Canadian Hospice Palliative Care Association.