Patients are being dispersed so the complex can be renovated over the next six months.
By STEPHEN NOHLGREN
Published December 18, 2003
PINELLAS PARK - Terri Schiavo and several dozen other clients of the Hospice of the Florida Suncoast are moving to new care facilities for six months while the hospice's aging residential complex undergoes a major overhaul.
Hospice House of Woodside, where Schiavo has been living for three years during a court battle over whether to remove her feeding tube, needs extensive roof and air-conditioning repairs.
New paint, carpet and other amenities will "enhance patient and family spaces," hospice spokesman Mike Bell said Wednesday.
The adjoining villas also will be renovated.
Schiavo and other residents are being dispersed this week to a nursing unit at Palms of Pasadena Hospital, Park Place assisted living home in Clearwater and Cypress Palms assisted living home in Largo, Bell said.
Hospice staff and volunteers will treat them there.
Schiavo's parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, were told their daughter would live in Park Place, said Pat Anderson, the Schindler's attorney. Schiavo is the center of a long-running legal battle between her husband and parents.
She moved to hospice in 2000, after a judge ruled that the feeding tube that keeps the brain-damaged woman alive could be removed.
Hospice serves about 1,700 clients at one time, mostly people dying in their own homes. But people without capable caregivers can live in the residential buildings. The buildings, which hospice bought 10 years ago, were formerly a Christian Science nursing center. They are more than 25 years old.
Transfers of patients began Tuesday and will continue for a few days, Bell said. Next week, furniture will be removed. Renovations will begin after the first of the year.
The buildings can hold up to 68 residents and were nearly full when the transfers began, Bell said.
New residential clients also will be admitted to the temporary homes.
The repairs, expected to cost more than $1-million, are expected to be finished in July. Hospice considered repairing one section at a time, so clients could stay in the homes, Bell said. But that would have dragged renovations out another six months and filled the home with dust and noise.
