FGH Hospice House Coming to Hattiesburg - WHLT 22 Connecting the Pine Belt

FGH Hospice House Coming to Hattiesburg

Forrest General Hospital plans to add a new piece to its facility, the Pine Belt's first ever hospice house. The hospice house will be located on South 40th Avenue in Hattiesburg. Hospice care is for patients with limited life expectancy and focuses on making patients pain free and comfortable before death. Right now about one point five million dollars has been raised for the five million dollar project. The FGH Healthcare Foundation is campaigning to reach their goal amount. The twelve-bed facility should take about 18 months to build.

"Hospice care is care for the terminally ill patients, patients who have a diagnosis of six months or less."

Melita Miller is the director of Forrest general hospital's home care and hospice. There are currently nine facilities in the pine belt, but this hospice house is the first of its kind in Hattiesburg.

"They either have to come into the hospital or to a nursing home or they may have to travel as far as Jackson or to the coast to get this care." The new facility will be a place for patients to stay to receive symptom and pain management. "We provide nursing services, we have a chaplain, we have a physician, and we have social services."

 Hospital officials say this will be a compliment to their home care facilities.  Over the past year hospice had over 550 patients on their service. "With this home in our town this will mean that any patient that needs this type of hospice care will be right there available for them."

The hospice house will be built solely with donations from community members and businesses.