Calling it “a journey that has been stressful, energizing, loving and worth every minute,” Cynthia E. Roy, CEO and president of Regional Hospice and Home Care, cut the ribbon Jan. 26 at the hospice”™s Center for Comfort Care & Healing, 30 Milestone Road, Danbury.
- From left, former state Rep. David Scribner; Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton; Regional Hospice and Home Care CEO and President Cynthia E. Roy; Regional Hospice Vice President of Finance Linda Smitas; and state Rep. Janice Giegler.
Some 200 donors, political supporters and others attended, many of whom helped bring to fruition what the center called “a new era in end-of-life care to the people of Connecticut.”
Officials with the hospice billed the 36,000-square-foot facility as Connecticut”™s “first and only nonprofit, family focused all-private-suite hospice center.”
More than 1,000 patients, many of them children, are expected to come to the center during the first year.
“A passing should be sacred,” Roy said. “It should be honored. It should be witnessed. We are hospice workers. We are witnesses to this final sacred moment in someone”™s life. We are blessed and honored to help our patients and their families at this deeply personal time.”
The construction of the center came after nearly seven years of work by Regional Hospice and other advocates in end-of-life care to modernize hospice legislation in the state. Gov. Dannel Malloy and former Gov. M. Jodi Rell were among those who supported changes in legislation, which passed unanimously and which Malloy signed into law in 2012.
Roy said she expects patients will come to the new hospice center from a 50-mile radius surrounding Danbury.
In addition, “Regional Hospice will continue to serve patients with hospice, palliative and comfort care in their own homes, nursing homes, assisted living homes, group homes and hospitals, as it has done for more than 30 years,” she said. “The new center is an additional option for those who seek it.”
