- April 18, 2024
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Halifax Health — Hospice of Volusia broke ground Sept. 4 and is planned to open next April.
BY WAYNE GRANT | STAFF WRITER
Even though Halifax Health — Hospice of Volusia-Flagler currently has three facilities in Volusia County, the planned Ormond Beach Care Center will fill a local need, according to Executive Director Fran Davis.
“If your loved one is in hospice, you want to be close to them,” Davis said. “Some people visit several times a day.”
A person in Ormond Beach would currently have to travel to Halifax's nearest hospice center, she said, in Port Orange, to see a relative. If that location were full, they would have to use one of the company's other two locations, in Orange City and Edgewater.
Halifax Health — Hospice of Volusia broke ground Sept. 4, at 235 Booth Road, with $6 million planned for construction of the 12-suite, 20,320-square-foot facility.
That may seem like a lot money for 12 suites, Davis says, but there is a lot to consider when building a hospice.
The Care Center will provide a home-like setting where hospice nurses, physicians, social workers, a chaplain and trained volunteers offer spiritual and emotional support and around-the-clock care for patients.
“The care center addresses the needs of the patient as they travel this journey,” Davis said, adding that a person must have a terminal diagnosis to be eligible for care.
While under hospice care, a person can be cared for in their home-suite by visiting medical professionals, but when their condition becomes critical, they are moved to a care center.
Davis said there will also be enough space in each suite for family members to visit or stay overnight.
“We are making this the patient’s home,” she said, citing each patient's “huge need for privacy.”
A courtyard is also incorporated for family, friends and caregivers to congregate.
“We call it the neighborhood,” Davis said. “Each room will have its own little porch with roof and people can walk out into the courtyard and reach out to others.”
The building will also have many artifacts from the old Ormond Hotel, which opened in 1888 and was torn down in the early 1990s. Windows and moldings, saved by the Ormond Beach Historical Society, will be used. There is also a large door and a banister from a stairway.
“We’re going to have a photo there so people can see where the banister was in the hotel,” she said. “We want the care center to reflect the Ormond Hotel so people will identify with the hospitality of those days.”
To offset building costs, Halifax Health — Hospice is currently attempting to raise $2.5 million.
“We believed that amount would be possible to raise in the area,” Davis said. So far, $1.6 million has been raised.
At the groundbreaking, Chief Marketing Officer Ann Martorano opened the program and Hospice Medical Director Raul Zimmerman explained the significance of the care center. Dozens of community leaders and elected officials attended.
Construction is expected to start next week and the care center should open in April 2014.
The Ormond Hotel was located where the Ormond Heritage Condominiums stands today, at the corner of East Granada Boulevard and John Anderson Drive. It was built by John Anderson and Joseph Price and purchased two years later by Henry Flagler, according to the Ormond Beach Historical Society.
One of the hotel’s most famous guests was Flagler’s partner in the Standard Oil Company, John D. Rockefeller Sr., who eventually built the Casements, his winter home.
Visit hovf.org or call 322-4701.
