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ChristianaCare announces new joint venture company for palliative and hospice care

Delaware Public Media

Delaware’s largest health system now offers care at the end of life. 

ChristianaCare announced this week a new joint venture company with Seasons Hospice & Palliative Care of Delaware. 

Seasons already manages two inpatient hospice units—one on each of ChristianaCare’s Delaware campuses. It also provides in-home hospice care throughout the state. 

“What this joint venture does is it brings together two experts and allows us to provide exceptional care at the right time, at the right place, which is very often in people’s homes—more and more these days,” said Rick Cuming, ChristianaCare’s Chief Nurse Executive and president of its Home Health Organization           

Where ChristianaCare would previously outsource to Seasons, it will now be adding its brand and joining Season’s in its work. 

Cuming says this is the one aspect of the care continuum that the health system didn’t provide until now. 

“So that people can continue to receive the exceptional care that they’ve become accustomed to at Christiana and not have to think about changing health providers at that very difficult and important time at the end of someone’s life,” he said.            

The need for hospice and palliative care is expected to grow in Delaware as its population ages. 

People over the age of 65 make up about 18% of Delaware’s population, and that is expected to go up to 52% in 2030 and 62% in 2040, according to state data from 2019.

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