New UNC Hospice Home Breaks Ground In Chatham Park

About a hundred people turned out in Pittsboro on Tuesday as officials broke ground on UNC Health Care’s new Hospice Home.

“We’re glad to be celebrating UNC Health Care’s newest opportunity to serve the people of North Carolina,” said Brian Goldstein, chief operating officer of the UNC Health Care System, as he welcomed onlookers to the site.

The hospice home is set to open in February. When it opens, Goldstein said, it will be a major addition for hospice care – Chatham County’s first inpatient hospice facility.

“In total, (it will have) 11,000 square feet,” he said, “complete with kitchen, dining room, meditation space, family visiting areas, and ten private rooms, each with an individual outdoor patio.”

In addition to serving as a boost for medical care, the building will also serve as a boost for the town of Pittsboro. It’s the second building to start construction in Chatham Park, Pittsboro’s new mega-development – the first, already under way, will open in December.

“We are pleased to partner with UNC Health Care,” said Chatham Park developer Tim Smith, who was on hand for the groundbreaking. “This hospice will provide end-of-life care options not previously available to local residents.”

Pittsboro town commissioner Pamela Baldwin – also present for the ceremony – agreed. “This is an honor, as well as an unparalleled privilege, to participate in the groundbreaking,” she said.

Officially, the building will be named the SECU Jim and Betsy Bryan Hospice Home of UNC Health Care. (Jim Johnson of the SECU Foundation was on hand to provide a major donation to the project – a $1 million challenge grant.) Dr. James Bryan, the building’s namesake, has been with the UNC Department of Internal Medicine since 1964; in the 1970s he introduced the modern hospice care movement to North Carolina.

That movement began in England with a physician named Cicely Saunders – and an idea that began to grow in the 1940s, when she was a nurse treating a Polish refugee who was terminally ill.

“There he was, undertaking this terminal course, and they became very close,” said Bryan at Tuesday’s ceremony. “And they talked about how ideal it would be to be at a home…with a window overlooking a park, with music, with friends and with family…

“And so when he died, he left a legacy to her – and said, ‘I want you to build a window.'”

That “window” eventually became St. Christopher’s in London, which opened in 1967 as the first modern facility devoted to hospice care. Today, there are “windows” like St. Christopher’s around the world – and come February, there will be another new “window” in Chatham Park.