Stillwater Hospice is establishing itself in downtown Powell after moving from Lovell late last year.

Last week the staff of the local office welcomed in the community for an open house at 210 N. Bent St. The downtown space is roughly three times the size of Stillwater Hospice’s previous office in Lovell, said co-owner Chris Graham.

“We had been [in Lovell] since 2019, we just outgrew the space,” executive director Gerri Ackley said, adding that there weren’t any similarly sized spaces available in Lovell.

The new Powell office opened Dec. 28.

Stillwater Hospice was organized in 2017 by a group of local people who “saw the need for exceptional end-of-life care centered around patients and employees.”

Graham said they were the first such Medicare-covered hospice care service in many Big Horn Basin communities, including Worland.

Medicare covers hospice care provided to patients in their residence, defined as wherever staff provide the service: a private hospital, residential home, nursing home or assisted living facility. Stillwater’s team includes registered nurses, home health aides, social workers and chaplains.

Graham said it’s rewarding to be able to bring a family from the horrible point of realizing its time for hospice care for a loved one, to being accepting of the situation and ready for the end. People also often don’t realize Medicare completely covers the service, he added, not just during hospice but for 11 months following a loved ones passing.

“We’ll be able to hold grief classes here and we’ll start those in March,” Graham said of the Powell office. “We’re pretty excited about that.”