History of Gateway Hospice: Recognizing the need to provide comprehensive services to patients and families facing a terminal illness the Board of Directors, in the spring of 1984, committed themselves and Clarksville Memorial Hospital, now Gateway Health System, to the philosophy of hospice. We are state licensed, JCAHO certified and were one of the first hospices in the state of Tennessee to attain Medicare certification. Since that time, we have served thousands of patients and their families with care and compassion.

Program Definition: Gateway Hospice is a program, which provides palliative and supportive care to terminally ill patients and their families. The goals of hospice are:
• To enhance the quality of living for the patient experiencing a life-threatening illness with a focus on comfort and control of pain and symptoms.
• To insure dignity in the dying process.
• To provide support to the survivors as they face the reality of death and begin to adjust to their loss.

Hospice focuses on the unique medical, spiritual and emotional needs of patients who have a prognosis measured in terms of months, not years. Hospice offers physical and emotional support to facilitate the patient and family’s adjustments to the stressful situations that arise during this transitional period.

The hospice staff is a physician-directed, nurse-coordinated team, composed of volunteers and professionals from many diverse fields that include social workers, physical therapists, home health aides, nutritionists, clergy, and pharmacists. Hospice functions seven days a week, 24 hours per day to provide the supportive care necessary for a family to remain in the warm environment of their home.

Hospice Philosophy: Hospice affirms life. Hospice exists to provide support and care for persons in the last phases of incurable disease so that they might live as fully and comfortably as possible. Hospice recognizes dying as a normal process whether or not resulting from disease. Hospice neither hastens nor postpones death. Hospice exists in the hope and belief that, through appropriate care and the promotion of a caring community sensitive to their needs, patients and families may be free to attain a degree of mental and spiritual preparation for death that is satisfactory to them.