A place to reflect. To share. To remember. To live.
The J.A. Wedum Residential Hospice is enhancing the way Allina Hospice provides end-of-life care in this region. We offer our hospice residents the opportunity to live each of their days in comfort, with dignity and surrounded by love.
By providing around-the-clock hospice care, the Wedum Hospice is honoring the wishes of patients who want to live the remainder of their days in a home-like setting. The Wedum Hospice also offers loved ones the opportunity to step back from being the caregiver and focus on what really matters - being a family.
The J.A. Wedum Residential Hospice is designed for patients with a life-limiting illness who need professional around-the-clock care. For more information, call 651-635-9173 or 1-800-261-0879.
All the comforts of home when they matter most
The J.A. Wedum Residential Hospice is designed for patients with a life-limiting illness who need professional around-the-clock care. For more information, call 651-635-9173 or 1-800-261-0879.
Volunteers needed
Volunteers are needed to give of their time and talents at the Wedum Hospice. Flexible schedules available. Learn more online at allina.com/hospice.
Who pays for your care?
The J.A. Wedum Residential Hospice is a Medicare certified facility. Hospice care is covered by most insurers, including Medicare, Medicaid and private insurers. Room and board expenses are separate from the hospice care billed to insurance. Generally, room and board expenses are paid by patients or their families. More information on payment and insurance information.
The J.A. Wedum Residential Hospice is an alternative to hospice care provided in your home or in a traditional hospital setting. The residential hospice will remind you of a comfortable home in a peaceful neighborhood. There’s a landscaped welcoming area that provides safe access around the clock. And we offer a wide range of amenities to make you feel at home:
Your care team will work closely with your doctor to meet your physical, emotional and spiritual needs. Along with support provided by nurses, home health aides and social workers, your care could include:
Massage therapy
Certified massage therapists can help manage pain, reduce stress, and improve circulation or mobility. Sessions are adapted to meet your comfort level.
Music therapy
Certified music therapists use a variety of music to provide physical, emotional and social comfort.
Pet therapy
Therapy pets can help improve emotional and physical conditions, loneliness, depression and loss of mobility. Certified therapists can provide sessions with therapy pets to meet your needs.
Spiritual care
Our chaplains provide compassionate support that is inclusive of your personal and spiritual beliefs. Chaplains work with patients and their loved ones from all faith affiliations, religions and cultural backgrounds.
Grief counseling
We offer families many grief counseling options throughout the year after the death of a loved one.
Volunteers
Caring volunteers from the community are available to you as helping hands, companions and sympathetic listeners.
Ken Paulus: Until you’ve experienced losing a loved one, either a parent or a child or a spouse, you don’t really understand how important hospice is.
MaryBeth Wedum: Well hi and what a special day, a special day for Allina Hospice and the J.A. Wedum Foundation. We are breaking ground today on a dream – a vision. The Allina J.A. Hospice facility is at this moment a reality.
Dale Vesledahl: Breaking ground today is so exhilarating that we now are actually sticking the shovel in the ground. We’re going to see a building and all the hard work and everybody is coming to fruition.
Mark Hansen: The facility is a little bit over 18,000 square feet. It’ probably going to be the largest hospice house in the state of the Minnesota. We were really trying to do is we were trying to deinstitutionalize the facility, really wanted to create a warm, homey like atmosphere.
Gloria Cade: I think I’m just most proud that we’re able to do this, that we’ve had so many well meaning people, who have donated their money and their time in the creation of this. Allina patients and other patients will be well served.
MaryBeth Wedum: In 1966, we got married. I mean he was my best friend, besides my husband.
Ken Paulus: My mom was a nurse, actually a nursing student. They had six kids and I remember there were two things that she basically drilled home to us when we were growing up, one was that you would, you’d finish college, that you’d find a way to get through college, because they didn’t have that, that opportunity, but the more important thing that you need to make a difference.
MaryBeth Wedum: He always went downtown and got the Wall Street Journal and he said Beth there, this is done in Russian. You know I, I just can’t read this and I said well John for heaven sakes go see your eye doctor. They did an MRI and he was diagnosed with brain cancer. He got everything in order, to make sure that the girls and I didn’t have to deal with any loose ends.
Ken Paulus: My mom was diagnosed with chronic leukemia roughly 10 years, before she passed away. She was the matriarch of our family, a very important kind of leader for our family. When my mom was in the final I’d say month or two of her life, her first reaction was to deny it and to be somewhat upset about it, that she did go through the stages of grieving and she had a very hard time with it. She was not ready and she didn’t want to die in a hospital.
MaryBeth Wedum: Our doctor suggested we call hospice and Dana and I just thought well we can take care of him and we were both wearing out and finally I followed the doctor’s orders and called hospice and realized I waited way too long. They gave John more peace of mind I think and one day John said to me, what do people do that can’t stay home and have them come into their home, because that was his desire was to stay home. That’s a tough one, because you know Allina doesn’t have a residential and there’s very – just a handful in, in the cities. And he said well you know maybe we should do something.
Ken Paulus: My mom – she did die in hospice. She died at home. Her desire ultimately to die at home and not be in a hospital, not that she didn’t get, get great hospital care, she did. So she passed away at home with her family around her, her hospice coordinator with her, that’s what everybody deserves in this community.
Dale Vesledahl: If John was here, he would be really, really, really proud.
MaryBeth Wedum: I plead with the community, if you don’t know anything about hospice, find out about it, because someday everybody’s going to need it.
Ken Paulus: You know I think what my mom would say to all of us, to me or to anybody that she came in contact with was kinda what I heard as a kid to make a difference. Just stand up for something, get behind something. Believe in something that makes a difference for our community and boy I gotta tell ya, we’re doing it at Allina. Everyday we do it with our mission, but particularly right now with this hospice we are, we are living to her expectations of making a difference and that’s really what it would be all about.
For more about the J.A. Wedum Residential Hospice, please call the Allina Hospice Foundation at 651-241-5460.
In 2003, a Minnesota businessman named John Wedum, who had cancer and was facing the end of his life, received in-home hospice care from Allina Hospice. In his honor, the J.A. Wedum Foundation issued a challenge grant to Allina Hospice to build a 12-bed residential hospice.
In April 2011, thanks to the generous support of donors, community members, the J.A. Wedum Foundation and Allina Hospitals & Clinics, construction began on the residential hospice. The J.A. Wedum Residential Hospice opened its doors to the community and began accepting patients in February 2012.
If you would like information on our programs or would like to make a gift to support Allina Hospice, please contact the Allina Hospice Foundation or call 651-241-5460.
The Allina Hospice Foundation was created to help Allina Hospice, the largest not-for-profit hospice in Minnesota, meet the needs of over 4,000 patients annually and their family members. Through the generous support of our donors, we can fulfill our mission by providing quality, compassionate hospice care regardless of an individual’s insurance or ability to pay.
Our vision is to transform the way end-of-life care is provided in this region so that all patients and their families:
know about hospice and advance care planning,
have access to hospice, regardless of their financial situation,
experience the highest quality of life possible.
Your support makes a difference
The Allina Hospice Foundation supports hospice care, patients and their family members. Family members and friends often choose to express their appreciation for the care and support their loved one received in hospice by making a gift in their memory. You may choose to support the greatest need by making an unrestricted gift or choose a specific hospice care fund.
Volunteer
Volunteers are needed to give of their time and talents at the Wedum Hospice. Flexible schedules available. Learn more online at allina.com/hospice.
See video full-screen.
Read video transcript.
Learn more about the vision behind the J.A. Wedum Residential Hospice.