Rural Hospice Has Offered Free Care for 40 Years
Its founder almost single-handedly brought hospice care to a remote area
In a nation where Medicare pays nearly $16 billion a year for hospice care, and nearly two-thirds of providers are for-profit businesses, a tiny Washington state agency is an outlier, reports Kaiser Health News.
Since 1978, a hospice founded by former nurse Rose Crumb has offered free end-of-life care to residents of Port Angeles and the surrounding area. She was the first in the region to care for dying AIDS patients in the early days of the epidemic. Her husband, “Red” Crumb, who died in 1984 of leukemia, was an early patient.
“He died the most perfect death,” Rose Crumb told visitors on a recent afternoon. “He spent time alone with each of our kids.”
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