The Aroostook House of Comfort is set to open this fall as Aroostook County’s only hospice center, in a collaboration with VNA Home Health Hospice, the region’s major provider of end-of-life home care.
VNA will be managing the Aroostook House of Comfort and has relocated one of its Aroostook County offices from Caribou to Presque Isle, setting up in half of the former MBNA building on Green Hill Drive.
“There’s a great need for a facility such as this,” said Colleen Hilton, president of VNA Home Health Hospice, the hospice-division of Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems.
The Aroostook Hospice Foundation has been working to open a hospice center since 2010, and the group purchased the former MBNA building in 2015.
VNA Home Health Hospice serves about 175 patients around Maine on a given day, said Hilton.
Most of those patients are receiving end-of-life care at home, but “there are times that patients require facility-based care,” Hilton said.
The Aroostook House of Comfort will be able to accommodate 6 patients at a time, and will be Maine’s fourth dedicated hospice center, along with facilities in Lewiston, Rockport and Scarborough.
Hilton said that the Aroostook House of Comfort will have about 15 employees when it’s fully-staffed, including a part-time physician. VNA has 60 employees working in Aroostook County, Hilton said.
“It’s great to be sharing this in a partnership. We see this as a long-term partnership.”
