New hospice house opens in Lakewood Ranch

When Fernanda Scalera’s father, Alfonso Cordoba, was visiting her Lakewood Ranch home in late 2011, she and her family had no idea what to do when they learned unexpectedly he was dying of colon cancer.

He visited the area from Colombia and only spoke Spanish.

That’s when Tidewell Hospice offered assistance. It found a doctor to speak to him about the dying process and nurses to help manage the pain and make him comfortable in Scalera’s home. When his symptoms became unmanageable there, he was transferred to the Ellenton Hospice House, where he died in January 2012.

“They treated him like a king,” Scalera said. “He ended up dying with dignity. I could not have done it without them.”

Scalera shared her story March 9 during the grand opening celebration for Tidewell Hospice’s new Lakewood Ranch Hospice House, located at 11535 Rangeland Parkway, Lakewood Ranch.

The Lakewood Ranch Hospice House is the first hospice house Tidewell has constructed since building its facility in Arcadia in 2007

and the eighth such house in its four-county territory.

At capacity, it will be Tidewell’s largest facility, second to its 14-bed hospice house in Bradenton. The Lakewood Ranch location has 12 rooms finished, and space for 12 more in the future. It will open six beds for patients within a month, pending industry certifications.

“A lot of care we provide is in someone’s home, but there are some patients who are so acutely ill, they need care 24-hour-a-day care, which is why hospice houses are so important,” Tidewell CEO Gerry Radford said. “We try to bring the homes closer to where the people are living. Knowing this community is growing at the rate it is, it’s important we have a house here. This new facility represents our commitment to (Lakewood Ranch).”

The new facility is designed with families and healthcare professionals in mind with centralized nursing station and offices, quiet rooms for grief counseling or other needs, a dining and kitchen area and a common living area.

Each patient room is about 300 square feet with space to accommodate loved ones who wish to stay on site. 

Tidewell Communications Director Timothy Wolfrum said Tidewell is about one-fifth complete with its goal to raise $7 million for the project. That figure includes $5 million for the house itself plus another $2 million for an endowment with which to operate it longterm.