Welcome to a new decade

It is hard to believe that we are almost through the month of January in this new decade year and may I take this opportunity to wish you a Happy New Year. Internationally, 2020 will see the hosting of the Summer Olympics in Japan, the 2020 Expo in Dubai, Presidential elections in the United States and is the Year of the Nurse and Midwife.

A little closer to home, this is also an important year for your hospice here on the Isle of Man as we bring to fruition some major enhancements to our building and patient facilities. The project, which has been made possible by a generous benefactor and which we have called Enhancing our Healing Environment, has enabled us to make some significant improvements in response to the changing needs of our patients and regulations. Building works are at an advanced stage and we will be sharing with you during February, more information about the enhancements.

We also have a very busy calendar of exciting events planned for this coming year, and we will be sharing much more detail about those on our website and Facebook in the coming months. If you don't follow us already on Facebook, please do look us up or go to hospice.org.im for much more information.

In 2019, as expected, we saw an increase in patient referrals by 18% on 2018. We also saw a significant increase in the number of hours of care delivered by our Hospice at Home team where we provided 3,084 hours of care - a rise of 62% on 2018. This is significant as you told us that you wanted to be able to stay at home for as long as possible, and this is now a reality for many of you.

With this in mind, I would like to say at this early stage of the new year a huge thank you to you and all of our supporters. Without your generous donations, help and support, we would not be able to continue to provide our services, free of charge, to patients, their families and their carers.

Anne Mills
Chief Executive