Bon Secours reaches $5 million goal to build Hospice House [Richmond Times-Dispatch, Va.]

Oct. 15--Bon Secours Richmond Health Care Foundation has reached a $5 million fundraising milestone toward the cost of constructing a free-standing hospice and palliative care facility in Chesterfield County.

Plans are to build the 16-suite homelike facility in the Bon Air community on land donated by John C. Cullather and Anthony F. Markel, honorary chairmen of the fundraising campaign.

The 6.5-acre site is behind a shopping center at Robious and Old Bon Air roads.

"Bon Secours is proud to be able to provide families and patients with a facility that will meet a critical unfilled need for compassionate end-of-life care in central Virginia," Peter J. Bernard, CEO of Bon Secours Virginia Health System, said in a statement.

The health system in 2012 announced plans to build the Community Hospice House as the Richmond region's first stand-alone community hospice home.

Typically hospice care is provided to people estimated by their doctors to have six months or less to live. The hospice team provides medical, psychological and spiritual support to patients and their families.

Bon Secours and other area hospitals provide in-hospital hospice services, and there are hospice agencies that provide services to patients in their homes. Medicare and many private insurers pay for hospice care.

The fundraising effort was led by William Boinest, chairman of the Bon Secours Richmond Health Care Foundation, and fundraising chairman D. Kyle Woolfolk Jr.

"The $5 million was the goal we had for the first phase of fundraising," said Cindy Reynolds, CEO of the Bon Secours Richmond Health Care Foundation. "We always knew it would cost more than that."

Key donors recognized Monday at a luncheon include four foundations: the Richmond Memorial Health Foundation; the Amy and Charles Millhiser Hospice Memorial Fund; The Cabell Foundation; and the Mary Morton Parsons Foundation.

Reynolds said there is no firm construction start date.

"We are selecting the developer and contractors. We don't have firm costs yet for what the building is going to cost," she said.

"We will be fundraising on an ongoing basis to cover not only the costs of patients who could not otherwise be treated in hospice because of insurance issues ... and also to continue with fundraising for building the project, furnishings, equipment, landscaping," she said.

Once the facility is built, its operating budget will come from Bon Secours Hospice Services. The facility will accept referrals from other health systems.

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