The staff of the Foundation for End of Life Care mourns the loss of Dr. Richard Payne, who died on January 3, 2018, in Durham, North Carolina after a brief illness.  Dr. Payne, a friend and ally of the Foundation and the hospice world, was internationally recognized and known in the areas of pain relief, palliative care, oncology and neurology.  He was board certified in Pain Mangement and Neurology and Palliative Care.  He was educated at Yale University and Harvard Medical School and served as the Chief of the Pain and Symptom Management Section of Neurology at MD Anderson Cancer Center.  He was leading the Pain and Palliative Care Center at Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York when Dr. Richard Fife, President of the Foundation, asked him to become a community member of the VITAS Healthcare Corporate Ethics Committee, the first national ethics committee on hospice.  Dr. Payne served with distinction on this committee for many years.  The Foundation for End of Life Care, along with VITAS Healthcare and its founders, Hugh Westbrook and Esther Colliflower, raised millions of dollars to fund the Esther Colliflower Chair that Dr. Payne held at Duke University, as well as the Duke Institute for Care at the End of Life, which was blessed with Dr. Payne’s leadership for many years. We remain grateful for having had the opportunity to work with Dr. Payne over the years;  and, we recognize his longstanding commitment and contributions to palliative care and hospice as invaluable.  Like so many, we will miss him.

The Foundation for End-of-Life Care would like to give thanks and special recognition to the patient care teams at Capital City Hospice in Columbus Ohio http://capitalcityhospice.com/. These caregivers and their management team serve hospice patients and their families in several counties in Central Ohio; and, they know, as we do, that the needs of the hospice patient and the family go beyond the medical care and attention that the patient receives. Often, the patient is the breadwinner in the family and the financial situation is threatened as their disease progresses. Or, the family caregiver has to cut back on work hours to care for the patient. Then they are facing a financial crisis too; and, the need for financial support is greater than ever at this point. Capital City Hospice recognizes this special need and has often shared donations that they receive from grateful families and friends. Many of these generous donations have been given to the Foundation for End-of-Life Care and have been put to use through our Patient Special Needs fund https://foundationeolc.org/what-we-fund/patient-special-needs/. We thank Capital City Hospice management, caregivers, other staff and their donors for their continued financial support of hospice patients and their support of our Foundation.