Bridgeway Hospice’s new nonprofit ensures access to care

BUDA — To ensure that members of the community have ease of access to the care that they need, a new nonprofit has been established out of a local hospice service in Buda: Bridgeway To Care Foundation.

“We’ve had the hospice for three years — Bridgeway Hospice — and then we have our home health, which is Be Healthy At Home; we established that in 2008. We just saw a certain number of clients that are going without care or kind of falling in between either Medicare age or not being able to utilize their hospice benefit, whether because they're [younger] than 65 or they're continuing to seek treatment, such as chemotherapy,” said Brandis Wilmore, president of Bridgeway Hospice. “We felt this particular type of demographic of people in our community, we could service them with our palliative program. Unfortunately, the palliative program is not being compensated or not being reimbursed on the hospice level, so we wanted to have it as an easy thing for our community to still be able to have access to care while they're in the interim of services between hospice, home health and palliative care.”

The foundation is going to help provide the community with services and access to palliative care prior to them needing hospice, Wilmore said. Mobile medical supplies are also going to be offered at a discounted rate, or free, so that residents will be able to have what they need, according to Wilmore.

“It's going to be a benefit for a community to have access to medical equipment and medical services. There's a lot of people that go without care and I think that it's something that we don't talk about and it's something that they don't know is out there,” she explained. “I think as a community, especially in Hays County, we’re at Main Street in Buda, we really want to be able to provide that to our local community … We just want to keep it local and make sure that we are able to take care of our community.”

According to the National Institute on Aging (NIA), palliative care is focused on improving the quality of life for people with serious illnesses and their care partners. The major elements of palliative care include managing a person’s symptoms effectively and ensuring that their care is coordinated. Palliative care involves multiple types of doctors and other care providers who work together with patients and their families and care partners to ensure that the treatment plan reflects the person’s goals and values.

Hospice care focuses on the care, comfort and quality of life of a person with a serious illness who is approaching the end of life, according to the NIA. Like palliative care, hospice provides comprehensive comfort care, as well as support for the family; however, in hospice, attempts to cure the person's illness are stopped. Hospice is provided for a person with a terminal illness whose doctor believes he or she has six months or less to live if the illness runs its natural course, according to the NIA.

“At some point, it may not be possible to cure a serious illness, or a patient may choose not to undergo certain treatments. Hospice is designed for this situation,” the NIA stated. “The patient beginning hospice care understands that his or her illness is not responding to medical attempts to cure it or to slow the disease's progress.”

Services provided by Bridgeway Hospice and the foundation include RN/LVN care, chaplain, medical social worker access, certified nursing assistants, homemaker services and 24/7 on-call support. Wilmore explained that they have a “good amount” of volunteers and a major part of that consists of veterans in order to give back to that demographic of the community.

“Veterans are a big part of our volunteer services, as well as they do pinning ceremonies for the other veterans that are wanting either final salutes or different types of veteran-to-veteran activities that we do for them,” she said. “Our medical director is a retired Air Force and he also wants to try to make sure we can give to the veterans community.”

Wilmore said that there has been immense support from the Buda Economic Development Corporation in order to get a grant to help Bridgeway’s chaplains have the education they need for working in end of life care, as well as speaking on behalf of different cultures.

According to the minutes of a Buda Economic Development Corporation meeting from September 2023, Bridgeway Hospice was one of the businesses that received an incentive of $10,000 for “workforce development.” Wilmore explained that they will be using the grant money that will be provided this year to establish a death doula program.

“[For anyone] who has a birth doula, it's kind of the opposite. They are able to help people transition or accept the next phase, along with their families, and assist with the last stages of life and getting them to feel more accepting of that pathway,” Wilmore said.

Adding onto the community support that Bridgeway has received, Wilmore credited the local hospitals that have been open to partnerships for home health and have worked closely with care coordinators to transition families in hospice or palliative care, as well as the Onion Creek Senior Center.

Looking to the future, Wilmore said that she hopes to have several community events, as well as constructing a brick-and-mortar facility where people can “go the last months of their life to a nice, peaceful setting like a tranquility garden or some kind of home setting that doesn't feel like a hospital, but is able to give them the peaceful passing.”

“I think everyone doesn't embrace it enough because they're scared of the conversation of hospice or end of life. We're all going there regardless of what age we are and we just all want to have that ability to have that service without any barriers,” Wilmore added. “That's kind of what this foundation is creating; it’s creating an easy button for people that are ready to finally take that step and when it's there, that they don't have to worry about payment and any other barriers.”

Bridgeway To Care Foundation's board consists of secretary Angelica Andersson, treasurer Patricia Disher, BSN, and Michelle Moore. Taylor Gill is the executive director for the foundation, as well as the administrator of Bridgeway Hospice.

To learn more about Bridgeway Hospice and the services it offers, visit www.bridgewayhospice.care.