New Nurses, Expanded Services

Part of Dan Ayres’ Hospice Goals

By PARKER FISH • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com

ONEONTA– With new offices, grief counseling, new nurses and early intervention, after just one year at Catskill Area Hospice and Palliative Care, Dan Ayres is already looking to steer the at-home care provider toward new heights.

“We currently serve roughly 120 patients across Otsego, Delaware and Schoharie counties, but really, we’d like to reach at least 130 to 140 patients,” said Ayres.

Succeeding 25 year president and CEO Lola Rathbone, Ayres took over the position in Jan. 2017. Ayres first order of business was to create one central location for Catskill Area Hospice to operate out of.

“We consolidated down from six different offices to one office,” said Ayres. “This building houses about 30 percent of our staff and serves as a central hub for our whole operation.”

The new offices, on River Street in Oneonta, hosted a ribbon cutting on Thursday, Jan. 11.

“Obviously, cutting back our number of offices has reduced overhead, which has helped us to expand our services,” said Ayres. “With less overhead, we were able to expand our nursing staff by 30 percent, which makes giving care to our patients much easier.”

Within the last year, Catskill Area Hospice has brought on four more full time nurses, expanding their operation from 11 to 15 care-givers across their 3100 square mile service area.

Providing care to terminally ill patients in their final months is a unique and most likely difficult market to expand in, but Ayres hopes to establish a plan to better reach potential patients.

“Our goal is to establish an earlier identification of these patients,” said Ayres. “We could care for a patient for a few months, or a few days, but our goal is to establish a connection earlier on, so that we can provide better care for that patient and their family. It basically boils down to this: the better you can care for a patient, the longer their life expectancy.”

But it isn’t just health care that Catskill Area Hospice provides. Dealing with terminally ill patients, there is often a very emotional grieving process that the family goes through, which Hospice helps with as well.

“We typically provide bereavement services for up to 13 months after a patient’s death,” said Ayres, explaining that Hospice will be expanding on that aspect of their operation as well. “We will be here to provide bereavement services to anyone looking for help. With any local tragic loss, we try to make our grief counselors available to anyone who needs them.”