Judy Connelly, left, the director of hospice for the Visiting Nurses Association, and Dorothy Staab, a VNA hospice nurse, reflect on a painting of Nancy Bohnet, the first director at the VNA, on Wednesday at the agency's offices on Hindman Road in Butler Township.

BUTLER TWP — The VNA Hospice in Butler County is celebrating 30 years of helping people have a better end to their lives.

The hospice movement — away from having to continue treatment until the end of life, better pain management, working with patients to make sure the way their lives end is something they approve of — began in the 1970s as a new way to provide health care to patients who aren't going to get better.

Liz Powell, the Visiting Nurses Association of Western Pennsylvania's president and CEO, said Wednesday the Butler hospice program was one of only three in Western Pennsylvania when it began in 1981.

The other two were in Pittsburgh in association with Allegheny General Hospital and the former Forbes Regional Medical Center.

Dorothy Staab, a registered nurse/hospice nurse has been with the VNA hospice since the beginning.

“At the start, hospice wasn't known,” Staab said, laughing about one older woman who always called the office for the “hostage nurses” to come to her house.

Oncologists, or doctors who specialize in the treatment of cancer, were the first doctors to know what hospice was and to refer patients to the new service.

“They were so good and they were the ones who really understood pain control for patients,” Judy Connelly, VNA Hospice director said.

The VNA Butler program was the first hospice in the nation to receive both Medicare and Joint Commission accreditation, Connelly said.Doctors in Butler County, as well as the VNA's entire service area of Armstrong, Mercer and northwestern Westmoreland counties, learned about what hospice could do for their patients and through the years, the VNA began seeing more and more patients.Staab said all hospice treatment has occurred in the home for most of the years the program has operated.About a year and a half ago, meeting a definite need, the VNA opened an inpatient hospice building in the Benbrook medical campus in Butler Township.Another way the program has grown is in the education level of today's patients who know there are options available to them.“It used to be that whatever the doctor said is what you did, and being in pain was just what happened when you had cancer, but now people don't want to be in pain and they want some say so in their treatment and quality of life,” Staab said.She said that process can take a long time, but it is one that she and all who work with the VNA Butler hospice believe is a gift.“Not a gift to them, but the patients and their families are a gift to us,” Staab said.Connelly agreed.“We are privileged to be allowed to care for people, especially at this time in their lives,” Connelly said.“For them to embrace us, really helps you grow to see what is important in life and that is the community we have and the support we receive and that we give,” she said.