After 17 years leading Lower Cape Fear Hospice, Laurie Bystrom, president and CEO, has announced plans to retire.
Bystrom, who is only the second executive to lead the nonprofit hospice and palliative care agency since it was founded in 1980, said her retirement would be effective no later than the end of December 2016.
A career nurse, Bystrom worked in the Lake County Hospital System in Ohio for 24 years before she moved to Wilmington in 1993 and joined New Hanover Regional Medical Center as a director in both the women’s surgical and obstetrician units.
In 1998, under LCFH’s first executive director Eloise Thomas, Bystrom joined the nonprofit hospice as its clinical director. When Thomas retired in 1999, Bystrom stepped into the executive director role.
“During these past 37 years, Eloise Thomas, our founding executive director, laid the foundation for LCFH,” Bystrom said. “During the 18 years I have been with our organization, we’ve seen tremendous growth and change.”
During Bystrom’s tenure, the agency has built two inpatient hospice care centers, all funded by the generosity of community support and donations. The six-bed Angel House Hospice Care Center opened in 2008 in Whiteville, and four years later SECU Hospice House of Brunswick opened in Bolivia with seven beds.
In 2009, the agency opened its Katherine and Duncan Phillips LifeCare & Counseling Center on its Wilmington campus and established a Home Office on the same grounds as the Wilmington hospice care center off Physicians Drive.
As growth and demand for hospice services continued, in 2014 Bystrom and her team completed an expansion of the Dr. Robert M. Fales Hospice Pavilion, which had originally opened in 1997. They added six more rooms in a new wing and renovated the existing 12-bed structure to better meet patient and family needs.
That same year, LCFH expanded its care and services into South Carolina after merging with Mercy Care, a nonprofit hospice based in Myrtle Beach.
Today, LCFH has about 400 employees across southeastern North Carolina and northeastern South Carolina. It offers hospice and palliative care to more than 700 people each day, and provides a number of free community services like grief support and counseling for children and adults.
Bystrom, who always has words of encouragement for her employees, believes those who work in hospice and palliative care are truly called to do so.
“To see how hospice and palliative care are changing end-of-life care in our communities is one of the great blessings of my time here,” Bystrom said. “To hear the stories of how our team members have helped patients and families through this most important journey has truly been the most rewarding experience I have had in my 48-year career in healthcare.”
Bystrom said after nearly 50 years in the industry, she is looking forward to stepping back and transitioning into a slower-paced phase of her life. She plans to spend more time with her husband and family, and plans to do some of the many things she has put off or has been too busy to accomplish.
“I’ve put together quite the long list,” she said.
Charles Long, chairman of the Lower Cape Fear Hospice Board of Directors, together with support from the LCFH Human Resources Department, will lead a transitions committee to find the most qualified candidate to become the agency’s next president and CEO. As LCFH makes this transition, the agency will be led by Gwen Whitley, its chief operating officer.
“The agency is in strong and competent hands and is well-positioned for its next phase of leadership,” Bystrom said. “I am appreciative of the two supportive boards I have worked with, and I am thankful for the dedicated team of staff I work with daily. They see what they do not as a job, but as a calling with a higher purpose.”
Lower Cape Fear Hospice is a nonprofit agency that provides healthcare and comfort to people with advanced illnesses; support and counseling to families; and education to the community in Bladen, Brunswick, Columbus, New Hanover, Onslow and Pender counties in North Carolina, and Horry County in South Carolina. For more information, visit www.lcfh.org or facebook.com/lcfhospice.
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