Ft Myers Beach - Good Neighbor

ST INS CARES-Hope Healthcare-Beyond Hospice

• "Cabo" Jim Schaller • Season 6 • Episode 5

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 13:46

Hospice is often misunderstood as a place you go, but what we see on the ground is a network of care that follows families through some of the hardest seasons of life. We’re joined by Jennifer Thrash, Director of Philanthropy for Hope Healthcare, to unpack what they actually do across Southwest Florida, including Charlotte County, Lee County, Collier County, Hendry County, and Glades County. From hospice houses in Bonita Springs, Fort Myers, Lehigh Acres, and Cape Coral to in-home visits, the goal stays the same: comfort, dignity, and real support for patients and families.

We dig into Hope Healthcare’s bereavement services, which are available to anyone in the community, even if you’ve never been part of their programs. Jennifer shares how they provide more than 10,000 hours of grief support each year to around 1,500 participants, with services available for up to 18 months after a death and for many kinds of loss, including the death of a pet. We also talk about their uniquely intensive pediatric hospice and pediatric palliative care program serving babies through age 21, plus the funding reality behind “extras” that change daily life, like music therapy and art therapy, and a $150,000 grant supporting their partnership with Golisano Children’s Hospital.

From there, we explore the PACE program (Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly), which supports low-income adults 55+ who are often homebound by coordinating care, coverage, and specialist access for hundreds of participants each year. We also highlight the Valor program honoring veterans and first responders, Camp Braveheart for children experiencing grief, and the volunteer engine behind it all, including pet therapy and bedside companionship.

If this conversation moves you, subscribe for more community stories, share it with someone who cares about nonprofit impact, and leave a review so more listeners can find these resources. What part of Hope Healthcare’s work should more people know about?

Hope Healthcare
Jennifer Thrash
Director of Philanthropy
9470 HealthPark Circle Fort Myers, FL 33908
800-835-1673
239-482-4673
hopehcs.org

Ft Myers Beach-Good Neighbor
To Nominate Someone to be Featured
Or
To Subscribe to the Newsletter
CLICK HERE
https://cabowabojim.com/listen-to-podcasts/

Welcome To The Podcast

Intro/Close

Welcome to State Insurance USA Cares Podcast, where we celebrate the heart of our communities. Each episode, we highlight local charities and nonprofits who are bringing hope, help, and healing to those who need it most. Get ready to be inspired by the amazing stories of people making a difference. Because together, we care.

Meet Hope Healthcare And Its Reach

Gail Langner

Well, hello, my name is Gail Langner. I'm with State Insurance Cares and ARM of State Insurance USA. I am thrilled today to have Jennifer Thrash on with us. She's the director of philanthropy for Hope Health Care. And Jennifer, thank you so much for joining us today. Appreciate it.

Jennifer Thrash

Thanks for the invitation.

Gail Langner

Absolutely. Well, I was thrilled to know that you have um that you touch of Charlotte County, Collier, Lee, Hendry, Glades. That's a big area to be in charge of. I I can tell you that my husband actually passed away at Joanne's house in Benita um 11 years ago. And so I am familiar with the Hope Hospice arm of Hope Healthcare, but I know that you have you do a lot more other than the hospice uh part of it. Could you explain to our listeners today exactly what all everything that you do, what you what it encompasses?

Bereavement Support For Any Loss

Jennifer Thrash

We do cover a lot, as you mentioned, and Joanne's house is one of four hospice houses that we uh currently have. We have one in Fort Myers, one in Lehigh, and one in Cape Coral as well. Um, but beyond our hospice care into the health care of Hope Healthcare, um, we provide bereavement services to everyone in the community. You don't even have to have gone through any of our programs. We offer that to everyone. And I will say we offer on average over 10,000 um hours of bereavement services each year to our our probably about 1,500 individual participants. Um, some obviously use our source our resources longer than others. Um, and that's fine. We provide that um eight that service for 18 months after a death. And it doesn't have to be, it could be a death of a grandparent, it could be a death of a pet. It's not just focused on um a loss of a spouse, which of course we

Pediatric Hospice And Palliative Care

Jennifer Thrash

do cover. So besides our breedman services, we are somewhat unique in providing hospice care and palliative care for kids. So not an industry necessarily many are in, um, but we do serve kids from babies neonatal to eight, uh, sorry, 21 to the age 21. And so many of them may have cancer uh diagnoses, but this is obviously a a population that we provide that needs a lot more services than um typical hospice uh provides. And so this is an area that we fundraise for quite a bit. We currently serve between 60 and 100 families. We are in the process of expanding that program. We just received the uh $150,000 grant to um have a liaison that supports our work with the Galisano Children's Hospital. We've already had a great partnership with them, but that will help augment our work. Um, and these are probably our neediest patients in terms of the services, and we provide music and art therapy, and um, those are costs that are not typically covered by Medicare and Medicaid. Right. Um, and this is something we've been well known for for the last 40 years that we've served the community. Um, so you talked a little bit about our hospice uh services, which we do provide in Lee, uh Hendry, and Glades County.

PACE Care For Older Adults

Jennifer Thrash

We also have another program that I should highlight, and that's our PACE program, and that's program for all inclusive care of the elderly. And that is a pretty unique program as well. Um, I liken it to adult daycare, but we provide so many more services. Uh, for instance, we become their insurance provider, and so we provide, they need a specialist, maybe see a podiatrist or cardiologist. We provide all their health care, and they are many of them are homebound, um low-income, 55 and older in our community. And this PACE program helps support about 360 some participants on an annual basis. And that program is growing by leaps and bounds. We provide that program in Charlotte County, Collier County, um, uh Lee County, of course, and then um I'm missing one county. I'll come up with it. Okay, so so Pace is in a number of our communities as well. And um, that program is is a star program, and we're expanding that throughout the state, not through Hope, but we are affiliated with Chapters Health. And so Chapters Health is expanding that program throughout um the other affiliates in the state. Um, and it's a wonderful program um for people who are participating. They should check out our our PACE uh social media. There's some great stories there.

Honoring Veterans And First Responders

Jennifer Thrash

And beyond um PACE, we also have a Valor program. So we're honoring our veterans and first responders. Uh, and we have many in the Southwest Florida community. We do pinning ceremonies and um special certifications and honor guard services for our to just to honor those who have served overseas and and domestically as well.

Gail Langner

Okay.

Jennifer Thrash

Incredible.

Gail Langner

So I'm sure you're working with other organizations. Let me give you well, you you did bring up Galasano with the with the kids care. Um, any anybody else that I know that you would be jointly working

Camp Braveheart And Local Partnerships

Gail Langner

with?

Jennifer Thrash

Yeah, one program I did um miss mentioning is our Camp Braveheart, which is part of our bereavement services, and it's a special kids camp where we send anywhere between 30 and 90 kids to a camp once a summer to help support their grief in learning about grief and how to deal with grief. And we partner with Valerie's House as well as a number of other nonprofits in the area that are serving children. So we do like to collaborate. Um obviously Lee Health has been a great um partner and referral source for us as well. Um I'm trying to think of a few others, but throughout our community, we are we are partnering with a number of organizations um as well as statewide. Um we're part of the PIC program, and I should know what this stands for, but it's uh partn, oh, it's partners in kids care. And so um we do have a number of partners throughout the the state as well as locally.

Gail Langner

I'm thrilled to hear that. Um when we decided to do state insurance cares, uh back back in the day we used to call it Love One Another, Valerie's House was our very first charity that we ever gave to. And I remember visiting there and the have you I'm sure you've been, right, Jennifer? I have the masks that the kids paint with the colors of how they're feeling, like blue means something, yellow means something. But the thing that got me crying before I even left was she showed us the inside of the mask, and the kids would paint that, showing how they felt on the inside things that they don't share with others. And many of the kids felt guilt that their mom had passed away or whatever. It's like, oh my gosh, how uh so you're you know that's a wonderful thing that you're doing, Jennifer. It really is. Um, where's the camp held?

Jennifer Thrash

Um, this past year it was at Camp Impact, which is over by Okeechobee, but it has moved around. Um it has been it used to be called uh Rainbow Kids Camp. Um, but this year, as our affiliation with chapters, uh three years ago, we are now calling it Camp Braveheart. But okay, um, so they're going on throughout the state as well. And I will say Sun Coast was a um huge help for that camp this year. They supplied a $30,000 grant for a number of the affiliates throughout the state who do Camp Braveheart. So as we talk about partnerships, we have funding partners too that are very important to our work.

Gail Langner

Isn't it incredible how generous people can be? Truly incredible. Southwest Florida, I you know, I'm not from here originally, and I was just uh blown away uh to find out how generous people really, really are in this area. Just incredible.

Volunteer Roles Including Pet Therapy

Gail Langner

Um it seems like you have a volunteer program as well. Is that right? We do, yes. We have a volunteer work.

Jennifer Thrash

Um, we have about right now about 250, like most nonprofits um after COVID, they kind of um their volunteer programs took a dip. Ours is building back, and so we're really excited. We had um recently just had a celebration. So our volunteer program is amazing. Um I would say probably about 5% is on patient-facing services, but such as we have a pet therapy program, so we're bringing dogs into people's homes. So when we talk about hospice care and serving 700, they're not all located in our hospice houses. Uh, I would say about 95% of our patients, we do serve in the home or assisted living facility, skilled nursing facility. So we're we're not just in our hospice houses. Um, and due to Medicare and Medicaid and all of their different algorithms and changes, we do serve quite a few people in their homes. And so our pet therapy program, we have a few that have been with us for a number of years and they go out to the homes. And I just saw an article from our volunteer newsletter that talked about these three golden retrievers going out. They also do visit our hospice houses. So, and the Valor program that I mentioned earlier is also one of our volunteer-driven programs, and um, so we're building that back up. If people want to get involved, we have a lot of opportunities right now to get involved. Um, doing some bedside going in and just talking to people. Oftentimes people are homebound and they need someone to talk to. And so our volunteer program is very impactful in terms of um providing that service to our elderly in the

How Volunteering Works And Signing Up

Jennifer Thrash

community.

Gail Langner

Well, I know that I hear um throughout um selfless sort of friends will even say that they're bored or they just need something to do or whatever. Um, if they were to sign up to be a volunteer, how would that work like hours-wise? Would it be you would sign up for two hours a week, or would you how would that work?

Jennifer Thrash

Very flexible. We have some needs. Like sometimes people want to do administrative stuff. So we have two days a week where we ask volunteers to come in and help support that. We also have um volunteer needs at our hospice houses to greet people when they come in and make them feel welcome and help direct them. Um, and so those are needs that we have Monday through Friday, but also on the weekend we have needs for those. Our website, you can sign up on the hope uh hds.org site. You can sign up to volunteer. Uh I'm trying to think of other opportunities, patient facing, um, our valid program, which I mentioned. Um what else? Uh, so they can really um opt into how many hours they want, which would be card than that you asked. Yes, it is, right. And we do have people who are obviously they travel back up north. Um, so we can work through that. There is there's some qualifications and and legal hoops you have to jump through, so to speak. Um, but that's that's everywhere nowadays.

Gail Langner

Right. That that's wonderful. Well, Jennifer, I I'm just overwhelmed with the amount of wonderful things that you're doing here. That's um way more than I even had anticipated. So I really appreciate everything you do. And of course, State Insurance Cares was happy to help um in um any way that we could.

Donating And Why Extras Matter

Gail Langner

So if somebody wanted to to reach out in any way, whether it's to donate or whatever, what is your um website?

Jennifer Thrash

It is hopecs healthcare services.org.

unknown

Okay.

Jennifer Thrash

And so, yeah, all of our information is on there. And I just I want to say thank you for state insurance um support as well, because it is very impactful. $500, $100. Um, that goes to support things that are not covered by Medicare and Medicaid, which much of hospice care is. However, it's the extras, it's the massage therapy, the art, the music therapies, um, the pet therapy programs. It's those programs that are directly impacting, impacting our patients. Um, and really helps with quality of life and of life care, um, being able to provide those services. So thank you.

Gail Langner

Well, absolutely. We're happy to help in any way we could. So um thanks so much again for for taking some time to be on the podcast today and uh look forward to doing a check presentation with you tomorrow.

unknown

Right.

Gail Langner

All right, thank you. Have a wonderful day. We'll see you then. Thanks, Gail. Uh-huh.

Closing Message And How To Connect

Intro/Close

Thank you for joining us on State Insurance USA Cares. We hope today's story uplifted and inspired you. If you'd like to support or learn more about the incredible work happening in your community, visit StateInsuranceusa.com or call 239 567 9992. You can also visit CaboWaboJim.com. Until next time, be sure to let your sun shine and keep sharing good and positive vibes wherever the waves take you.