Hospice offering advanced services to community

A local hospice group says it has revamped its approach to health care in the community since it first opened its doors more than a year ago in order to better serve local patients and their families.

Creekside Hospice, located at 2200 E. Calvada Boulevard, has added more staff and become more involved with community partners such as the Senior Center, NyE Communities Coalition and Desert View Hospital in a quest to provide the highest level of quality care to Pahrump.

“We’ve actually almost completely re-tooled our infrastructure, as far as our employees go, just to better serve Pahrump,” Pahrump Creekside spokesperson Michael Gagliano said. “And that does mean we have increased our staff, we’ve definitely done what we can to prepare for an increased workload that’s anticipated as this is a retirement community. So having additional support, having extra aides on staff, will definitely benefit them and benefits us as well.”

Gagliano said Creekside Hospice offers the traditional services for comfort care and pain management, but also provides other resources including respite care to aid full-time caregivers and avenues for patient family members to cope with their grief or learn more about the process their loved one is going through.

Creekside Hospice offers aides on a 24-hour basis to help those caring full-time for their family members. The facility also owns its own inpatient service and medical supply service as well.

“Let’s say you wanted to take a few days to go visit family or you have an important trip planned that you don’t want to lose out on. We can actually come in and offer 24-hour care. We usually do that by taking the patient to one of our inpatient facilities. Our facility is located in Las Vegas on Durango Drive at the 215 or Warm Springs, so it’s actually about a 45- minute drive from here. It’s as close to local as you can get without actually being local, which makes it very convenient. We also are a one- stop shop. For example with medical equipment, let’s say you needed a medical bed, we already have the equipment company, we own the equipment company. Medications, transportation to get somebody from the inpatient center to the hospital or back home or wherever they need to go, we provide all of those things so there’s no one else double-dipping or coming in and playing monkey in the middle. And we keep in contact with the patient’s primary physician the entire time as well,” Gagliano said.

The ultimate goal of offering a wide range of different services and resources is to provide quality care to patients and their families in a dignified and respectable manner, Gagliano said.

“What people need to understand, as a whole, is health care is really a service industry, especially hospice. So that means you need to be able to take care of the patient with dignity and respect and you need to treat them as if they were one of your own. There can be companies that look at it as let me just put you on the medicine and that’s that, but we want to be with you and the patient every step of the way,” he said.

Although Creekside had offices in both Pahrump and Las Vegas, Creekside has said it is committed to growing in the local community.

“We’ve definitely become more on board with the community. We just had a Caregiver Resource Fair, and thanks to Roxanne, Meagan and the whole Desert View Hospital crew, I felt like that was a great success. We’ve also become very active at the Senior Center here in town, we’re out there every third Monday and we do health and wellness screenings. We’ve become more active with the Nye Communities Coalition and some of the events they put on as well. So we just want you to understand it’s not about Las Vegas vs. Pahrump. Pahrump is our community and we want to own it and to be accountable to the people here,” he said.

As part of that effort to grow in the local community, the local Creekside Hospice office is also reportedly looking for volunteers.

For more information about the company’s services or volunteer opportunities, call the Pahrump office at 775-727-7009.