40 Years of History

For four decades, the Coastal Hospice staff have been frontline workers, serving patients and families when they are at their most vulnerable. In fact, when Coastal Hospice was formed in 1980, “modern hospice” had only been in the United States since 1974. The movement had begun just a decade earlier in England. Coastal Hospice came to be because a small, dedicated group of Salisbury-area residents joined together to see if a hospice could be formed locally. They visited other hospices and palliative care facilities and voted to file a Certificate of Need with the State of Maryland. The hospice concept was so new that we began as a Home Health Agency until a hospice benefit was enacted. The committee, which became our first board, took inspiration for our mission and logo from writer and philosopher G.K. Chesterton: “We’re all in the same boat in stormy sea, and we owe each other a terrible loyalty.”