Fund drive launched to create new hospice house

MARQUETTE — Trillium House has launched a fund drive to create a hospice house in Marquette.

Upon opening, Trillium House will hold eight rooms for hospice patients who cannot safely receive care in their home. However, this is not an attempt to reinvent hospice.

“We are trying to fill a need for hospice patients who either don’t have a home, or who do but don’t have sufficient help in the home at the end of their lives when sometimes an awful lot of help is needed, or for people who do have a home, people and help, but who from time to time need a break, what we call respite care,” said Board President Dan Mazzuchi.

This type of care will be targeted toward a significant minority to provide enhanced care to those who need it.

“I can tell you from not only my professional experience, but my personal experience with my mother that a hospice house is absolutely needed,” said Trillium House Board Member Aaron Scholnik, “it made the best of a bad situation and no other arrangement would have been possible and we see those patients all the time.”

Trillium House will operate on a sliding fee scale based on a patient’s ability to pay along with operating cost factors.

Planning and preparation for the house in Marquette has been exceedingly proficient thanks to guidance provided by Omega House in Houghton.

“We can study the staffing, we can study the costs, we can study the relationship that they have with the volunteer community that really makes the place run and so forth,” added Mazzuchi, “we can learn endlessly from them and we have. They’ve been very kind to us and have been our mentors.”

The building process will not commence until 90% of the funds needed are raised or pledged. Currently they are just under raising about half of that.

To donate to the Trillium House fund drive, call 906-264-5026 or click here.