Being home in familiar surroundings and close to family and friends is the choice of most people. But when that isn't possible, Tidewell provides an alternative where professional staff is available to you around the clock and a physician specializing in symptom control visits daily to help develop a treatment plan that will enable you to return home to those most important in your life.

Tidewell has built seven bright and cheerful Hospice Houses specifically for this purpose.

How Can Hospice House Help?

There is beauty all around. Each room is spacious, with French doors leading to a private lanai and lots of natural light. There are comfortable overstuffed chairs in cozy corners and pretty linens on the beds. Living rooms offer a place for you and your loved ones to enjoy music, TV and conversation. Gardens provide a simple pleasure and sanctuary from a hectic world.

Tidewell's Hospice Houses also offer you a variety of care options. Since their inception, the houses have been the site of residential care for patients who have no caregiver or whose caregiver is no longer able to care for them at home. Now, hospice houses are also licensed as inpatient facilities, allowing for the skilled nursing care of patients whose needs previously could only be met in the hospital setting. Patients in need of continuous symptom control can be admitted to hospice house for around-the-clock care while their condition is stabilized. When those symptoms are brought under control and the patient and their family members feel comfortable making the transition, they can return to where most patients really want to be - their own home.

There are other facets to hospice house, as well. As hands-on facilities with staff specializing in end-of-life care, they serve as a bridge between the hospital and your own home. Hospice house can be a place of temporary placement for the control of distressing symptoms or it can be a place where you can stay while your caregivers get a well-earned, much-needed period of respite. Each situation is assessed individually to determine the appropriate level of care.

With staff and volunteers who have chosen palliative care as their life's work, and who understand that those things that enriched our patients' lives prior to their diagnoses continue to enrich them today, Hospice house is a place that will enable you to live and accept life's end in peace and dignity.

In the Heart of Seven Communities

Tidewell has built facilities in the heart of our communities: Arcadia, Bradenton, Ellenton, Sarasota, Venice, Englewood and Port Charlotte. Each hospice house has an adjacent staff center to help meet the burgeoning need for end-of-life care in our service area. This allows Tidewell to provide cost-effective, 24-hour coverage for home patients while ensuring continuity of care for hospice house residents.

Each staff center includes a multi-purpose meeting room with ample space to host our valued volunteers and a wide variety of grief support groups that are free and open to the public.

But hospice is much more than its buildings: it is a philosophy of caring that is built on the cornerstone of patient choice.