Comfort Care Hospice history

In 1944, she left Oxford to attend St Thomas’ Hospital to become a nurse and shortly after, an almoner, where she worked closely with terminally ill patients.

1948: Cicely Saunders, a nurse at Archway Hospital in London, falls in love with a man who has only weeks to live.

Ten years later, she successfully opened St Christopher’s Hospice, which would also serve as a research institution and teaching hospital to make the necessary strides and improvements in hospice and palliative care. It was then that she observed her patients weren’t getting the pain management care they needed, and she sought to get the credentials that she would need to open her own specialized hospice by becoming a doctor in 1957.

In 1963, during a talk at Yale University in the US, Doctor Saunders introduced the idea of specialized care for the dying, which centered on palliative care rather than treatments to cure.

Doctor Florence Wald, Dean of the Yale School of Nursing, took a sabbatical in 1968 to work at St Christopher’s to experience hospice first hand.

In 1972, Kubler-Ross testified before the US Senate Special Committee on Aging about the right to die with dignity, a big part of which is the right to make decisions about one’s end-of-life care and to die at home.

To learn more, Doctor Hampton visited Dame Cicely Saunders’ hospice in England in 1978 and was subsequently inspired to initiate hospice care for Oklahomans.

In 1979, Doctor Cicely Saunders was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Doctor Hampton helped found Hospice of Central Oklahoma in 1980, which evolved as the United States legislature enacted a Medicare hospice benefit and certification process.

1983: President Reagan signs Medicare Hospice Benefit into law, covering care for 80%-85% of hospice beneficiaries.

After a series of grueling attempts to get a hospice program funded by the government, the Medicare Hospice Benefit was implemented in 1986.

In 1990, Doctor Hampton and other physicians from the Oklahoma County Medical Society launched Hospice of Oklahoma County, a Medicare-certified hospice.

1993: Hospice is included as a nationally guaranteed benefit under President Clinton’s health care reform proposal.

1997: The growing end-of-life movement focuses national attention on quality of life at the end of life, need for increased public awareness and physician education

2005:Dame Cecily Saunders dies from cancer at St Christopher’s at the age of 87.

2006: InauguralWorld Day is held on October 1 to focus global attention on hospice and palliative care; events are held in 70 countries.

In 2009, it also began operating an inpatient hospice unit called The INTEGRIS Hospice House, which is the only in-patient hospice provider in Oklahoma.

Hospice care in the United States just celebrated 40 years in 2014.

According to the NHPCO [National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization], about 1.4 million Medicare beneficiaries were enrolled in hospice care for one day or more in 2015.