They've been talking about it since 2001. And while there's still capital money to raise, designs to approve and major issues to settle regarding long-term operating funds, it's beginning to look like the hard-working volunteers who founded the Foothills Country Hospice Society (FCHS) will open this country's first rural hospice near the town of Okotoks in 2006.

If all goes according to plan, the free-standing facility will be located on eight acres of land near Okotoks in the Municipal District (MD) of Foothills, says Craig Evans, FCHS vice-chair and the person in charge of the society's fund-raising committee.

A former Okotoks resident who stuck with the project even though he and his family now live in Calgary, Evans and his wife, Rev. Marilyn Evans, got involved in the project through her work as the United Church minister in Okotoks and DeWinton.

The location of the rural hospice won't be revealed until April, but the facility is expected to cost $2.5 million. It will accommodate four or six terminally ill adult clients at a time and include family rooms and facilities for medical staff, physiotherapy and pastoral aids. The site will also feature walking paths and a garden.

Clients will move into the hospice for 24-hour care during the last weeks of their lives - when comfort versus cure becomes the central quality-of-life focus for them and their families. The society also plans to offer respite care, enabling terminally ill clients who've chosen to die at home to stay at the hospice for a few days or weeks, giving their families and caregivers a chance to rest and recoup, says Evans.

The society expects most of the hospice's clients will come from the MD of Foothills and the towns it surrounds, including Okotoks, High River, Turner Valley and Black Diamond. That MD also includes the Village of Longview and a number of hamlets, such as DeWinton and Millarville. According to a 2003 census, 17,682 people live in the rural municipality. Another 15,000 people live in Okotoks and High River is home to about 9,500 people.

While a growing number of rural communities in Alberta have palliative care rooms in their hospitals, Okotoks does not have a hospital, meaning area residents must travel longer distances to be with loved ones in palliative care. (The Okotoks Health & Wellness Centre opened last year, offering urgent care and a host of other services, including public health, diagnostic imaging (X-ray) and out-patient/ambulatory care clinics.)

Land for the proposed rural hospice, valued at $250,000 to $300,000, has already been donated. Its benefactor and the hospice location won't be made public until the society ensures the site meets the facility's needs and can be properly zoned, explains Evans.

In the meantime, the FCHS has hired Gowling and Gibb Architects of Calgary to calculate rough construction costs and complete the design of what Evans describes as a "non-institutional, home-like structure."

Evans expects a formal announcement of the hospice location will be made in April, when architectural designs should also be ready for public release. Prior to that, preliminary designs will be revealed at a public meeting in February.

Discussions about operating costs at the rural hospice, a first for Canada and Alberta, are under way with the Calgary Health Region. The society is also looking at how an endowment fund could support the facility.

True to the society's focus on the hospice's long-term stability, Evans says the society wants two years of "operating money in our hands or available to us" before construction begins. "We're not going to put a shovel in the ground unless we've got the money there."

Still, the issue of operating funds presents a challenge, not a problem, insists Evans - who sees early community support for the capital fund-raising campaign as an indication of the need for a hospice in the region. To date, the society (with just one half-time employee and a team of committed volunteers) has raised about $700,000 toward capital costs, including future commitments from local service groups, particularly the Lions and Rotary. Last fall, the society hosted its first gala, raising another $115,000 for the project. Area residents David and Leslie Bissett also donated $1 million. That donation can be used for capital works or to kick-start an operating endowment.

In December, the society launched its latest fund-raising campaign with a plan to sell every square foot of the 8,500-sq.-ft. building for $50 a sq. ft. by the end of 2005. "We don't want this to be a facility that's funded by very wealthy and well-to-do individuals," notes Evans. All of the money raised by the square-foot campaign goes directly to the capital fund and it's a good way "for the majority of individuals and family members and even small businesses" to participate.

Evans says the free-standing hospice could become a template for similar facilities in other parts of rural Alberta. And the arguments are humanitarian, as well as economic. FCHS research pegs hospice care costs at somewhere between $350 and $400 a day, a sharp contrast to hospital care valued at about $1,000 a day. Alberta Health Care currently covers some palliative care costs, with clients of residential hospices paying a room and board fee.

(Joy Gregory can be reached at joy@businessedge.ca)