Dr. Donald Wain Allen, a family physician in Summit and Wasatch counties for 25 years, has a long resume. He’s served on numerous boards, been on the faculty at several institutions and worked in a dozen hospitals. Last month he was notified that he can add another line to those credentials: Board Certified in Hospice and Palliative Medicine.
It’s a designation so new, few doctors have it, explained Marcene Hledike, director of Alpine Hospice and Home Care in Heber.
The company sponsored Allen’s testing for the certification to support him in his role as medical director for the team caring for patients in Summit and Wasatch.
As a rural physician, Allen had been seeing patients from the cradle to the grave for years. As hospice care has developed into a Medicare-supported specialty, Allen decided it was time to go for certification.
“Hospice was an augmentation, a carrying-on of the care we’ve already been doing,” he explained. “Over the years, it’s become a more formalized type of care.”
Allen has worked as medical director of Rocky Mountain Care Center, a Heber nursing home, for the past 10 years. During that time, he’s observed Medicare officials becoming more accepting of hospice care as an alternative to hospitalization for terminal patients.
It’s not only less expensive, but allows patients to finish their lives in their home surrounded by family, he said.
As that Medicare funding has been more available, the services available for families have improved and become more sophisticated, he explained.
“It’s been a slow but steady progression for more accessible care,” he said.
Hospice and Palliative care has been recognized as a medical specialty within the last few years, he explained. It contrasts starkly from other types of general medicine because most doctors diagnose and treat symptoms. Hospice physicians manage symptoms through the end of life.
Whereas before, Allen would make as many house calls as he could for a patient choosing to die at home, companies like Alpine provide an entire team to support both the patient and the family.
Currently there are several companies in the area offering similar services and Allen is medical director for others, too. He believes Board Certification will eventually become required in this area of health care, but until then, this step gives families and other physicians greater confidence that people in Summit and Wasatch are well-cared for.
“Certification clarifies to everybody that he has gone through a process that builds on an already strong base,” Hledike said. “It’s very prestigious.”
Alpine will next work on having its nurses certified in hospice care as well as its clinical social worker Neil Anderton, she said.
“It shows the commitment of both them and us. Hospice is a unique entity,” she added.
Allen has been working with area hospice care teams for the last five years. He said the team approach takes a lot of stress off a family struggling with their situation.
He’s currently working with a young boy with cancer. That illness is consuming the energies of the entire family, he explained. Hospice and home care professionals can come in and help with housework or childcare so a parent can go grocery shopping or focus their attentions on their dying son.
Previously, when an elderly person wished to end their life at home, family members were always concerned that the patient may have died earlier than needful because of inadequate care. There used to be a dilemma over whether turning to hospice workers was a refusal of care or better care. Now it’s clearly superior, he said.
He referenced a member on the Alpine team that performs music therapy.
“Music therapy is about maintaining and restoring mental and physical health,” explained therapist Kristi Phillips.
She’s able to use music to assess the mental health of hospice patients, to help them relax, express themselves and connect with their family members.
Kathy Rydman, patient care coordinator, said the team is also able to train volunteers who sit with patients, play cards or work on scrapbooks with them. Everything hospice and home care workers do is designed to preserve dignity during terminal illness, she said.