Lin Sue Cooney: Our community makes Hospice of the Valley unique

Altagracia Zamora with her grandchildren.

A family needing hospice care for a loved one can be overwhelmed by all the options — there are 80-plus hospices in Arizona!

Although it’s true that many deliver compassionate care, it’s also true that all hospices are not the same.

Hospice of the Valley is unique in some extraordinary ways. It was the first hospice in Arizona and is still the largest — caring for 18,500 patients and their families last year alone.

Forty years of caring for families helped us develop specialized expertise in pediatric, perinatal, pulmonary and dementia care.

We partner with Ryan House to provide no-cost respite for families with a medically fragile child, and we’re the only hospice providing no-cost family grief support through our New Song Center for Grieving Children. We offer much more than end-of-life care.

And we have a mission that has never wavered.

As one of a few not-for-profit hospices in Arizona — we believe in “comfort and dignity” for all… whether you have insurance coverage or not.

Hospice of the Valley holds its Auction of Heirlooms and Art at the Arizona Biltmore. (Photo: Dave Seibert/The Republic)

In our 40-year history, Hospice of the Valley has never turned anyone away.

Founded in 1977 by a group of volunteers who envisioned a more humane way of dying, patients and families were supported by community donors and grants for five years before Medicare paid for hospice. That commitment to caring for people regardless of reimbursement is still in our DNA.

Rest assured, those who cannot afford care will get it anyway — last year alone, we were privileged to offer more than $9 million in charity care.

But we couldn’t do it without the generosity of our community!

Families across the Valley that have been touched by hospice want others to have that same compassionate support. They shop at our four White Dove Thrift Shoppes, hold fundraisers to benefit our programs and make donations every year.

Those charity care dollars pay for more than medical care — they pay the mortgage when a parent leaves a job to take care of a dying child, or cover utilities to keep the lights on, buy groceries when the fridge is empty or purchase gas cards to help a patient without transportation get to the doctor.

Thank you for helping Hospice of the Valley serve those with nowhere else to turn.

YOU are one of the biggest reasons that all hospices are not the same.