Community Hospice is committed to providing supportive, palliative and loving care to terminally ill clients and their families through an interdisciplinary team. Our team consists of many local faces in the community. Dr. John Inzerillo, of the Marion L. Sheppard Center is our medical director for Beaufort County and Dr. Mark Beamer of Vidant Family Medicine of Belhaven is our medical director for the Englehard and Greenville offices. All of our staff live locally and most were born and raised here. We are one of the most respected hospice agencies in the southeast and the largest hospice provider in the Carolinas. We offer patients transfer of care so they can stay within our company if they move or want to visit family in another area.

The vision of Community Hospice is to provide comfort for body and spirit. Our united goal is to become the symbol for quality and caring health services for every person in our community. We are a caring organization and treat our employees, patients and providers with respect, dignity and compassion. We value integrity and observe the highest ethical standards. We are committed to strive for excellence, daily.

We are hospice experts. Our staff is expertly trained on end of life care with continued education required monthly. Because we do not offer other services, such as home health, our staff does not have to wear more than one hat when providing patient care. Our response time — Now means Now. We offer same day admissions, admitting patients 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. When a patient is discharged from the hospital on our services, we meet them at their home to ensure the transition goes smoothly. We do not outsource our on-call staff; our staff is all local which ensures continuity of care. When you call, you get the local team directly on the phone. Every clinical call received equals a visit from one of our expertly trained nurses.

Our customer satisfaction rate is 98 percent. We regularly conduct client satisfaction surveys through an independent outside resource and results show: 98 percent would recommend us to friends or family; 98 percent were happy with the care their loved ones received and were glad they chose our hospice care for their loved one; 99 percent felt their concerns and opinions were important and would choose our hospice care for themselves if needed.

We truly partner with skilled nursing facilities. We provide well-planned procedures to facilitate communication between our team and the nursing home staff. Our staff is knowledgeable in nursing home regulatory and care environments. The Medicare Hospice Benefit covers all visits by our team members, most durable medical equipment and the cost of needed supplies and medications that are related to the hospice diagnosis. We are additional eyes and ears and support for the family when their loved one is a resident within a facility.

Our Community Hospice Foundation is a wonderful resource to those who are in need on our service. We have the ability to pull resources on an as-needed basis that help more patients and assist in paying for funerals, cremations, heat, electricity, rent, etc.

We go above and beyond in our service offerings. Through our network of volunteers we offer additional local services locally such as, 11^th-hour support, music therapy, pet therapy and flower delivery.

When you or your loved one requires hospice care, feel free to call us or stop on in at 222 Stewart Parkway in downtown Washington. You will be greeted by friendly staff, ready to assist you. This poem was written by one of our patients, Michael Josephson, entitled “What Will Matter” and we hope you will find uplifting.

“Ready or not, some day it will all come to an end. There will be no more sunrises, no minutes, hours or days. All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten, will pass to someone else. Your wealth, fame and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance. It will not matter what you owned or what you were owed. Your grudges, resentments, frustrations and jealousies will finally disappear. So too, your hopes, ambitions, plans and to-do lists will expire. The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away. It won’t matter where you came from or what side of the tracks you lived on at the end. It won’t matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant. Even your gender and skin color will be irrelevant. So what will matter? How will the value of your days be measured? What will matter is not what you bought but what built, not what you got but what you gave. What will matter is not your success but your significance. What will matter is not what you learned but what you taught. What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion, courage or sacrifice that enriched, empowered or encouraged others to emulate your example. What will matter is not your competence but your character. What will matter is not how many people you knew, but how many will feel a lasting loss when you’re gone. What will matter is not your memories but the memories of those who loved you. What will matter is how long you will be remembered, by whom and for what. Living a life that matters doesn’t happen by accident. It’s not a matter of circumstance but of choice. Choose a life that matters.”

Amy Brewer is the hospice care coordinator at Community Hospice of Beaufort County.