Pathways inpatient care center accepts patients

FORT COLLINS – Pathways, a 44-year-old nonprofit agency that provides hospice, palliative care, grief and loss counseling services, has opened its stand-alone hospice inpatient care center and is accepting patients.

The center, made possible by an $8 million capital campaign, held a ribbon-cutting ceremony in July but had to await final licensure before it could admit patients, said Pathways spokesman Evan Hyatt.

Located at 317 Carpenter Road, between Fort Collins and Loveland, the 15,000-square-foot center will provide hospice care in a homelike setting to patients needing hospital-level treatment. The 12-bed facility has the capacity to expand to 18 beds when needed.

Pathways said the center is the only stand-alone, inpatient hospice facility in Northern Colorado

and will serve not only local residents but also those from Colorado’s eastern plains, Wyoming, Nebraska and Kansas. Each of the rooms is large enough to accommodate groups of visitors and allows up to three family members to stay overnight and utilize a communal kitchen.

The in-patient care center, on the east end of the Pathways campus along Carpenter Road, is built in a semi-circle facing north. It includes gardens and walkways, a non-denominational chapel, an outdoor walking labyrinth and other quiet areas. The center has two rooms especially equipped with negative-pressure ventilation to allow for safe care of patients with COVID-19 and other infectious respiratory diseases.

The new hospice, built in response to projections that the number of Larimer County residents age 65 and older will grow by 140% in the next 20 years, replaces a six-bed hospice center Pathways leased at McKee Medical Center in Loveland, which had limited space and was full one out of every four days in 2020. A similar unit at North Colorado Medical Center in Greeley closed in 2018.

Pathways also intends to work with colleges and universities to train the next generation of health care professionals, including nurses, physicians, social workers, therapists and counselors.

MOA Architecture designed the building, and Fransen and Pittman was the general contractor.

Pathways is an affiliate of the Care Synergy network, which provides mission-support services for not-for-profit, community-based home health care, hospice and palliative-care providers serving the Front Range of Colorado including the Colorado Visiting Nurse Association, The Denver Hospice and Pikes Peak Hospice and Palliative Care. Care Synergy affiliate organizations operate as distinct organizations while sharing best practices.

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