Toronto Hospuce woman supporting and caring for terminally ill mother

Care and Consideration above all else

The people at Toronto Commandery Hospice are lifelong care specialists who believe that life’s final stages always deserve quality, dignity, and respect. Our services are designed to meet the physical, psycho-social and spiritual needs for end-of-life care through grief and bereavement, at no cost, to those in need, thanks to the support of the Ministry of Health and our community partners.

How Can We Help?

Although death is a natural part of life, the thought of dying understandably still frightens many of us. We are here to help.

Hospice focuses on providing relief for those in need. Hospice-Palliative care is a philosophy to support those living with a life limiting illness. Care can last from days to years and can include care in your home or in a residential hospice.

Hospice-Palliative care can improve quality of life by offering relief and support at the end of life. Whatever the disease, however it has advanced, and whatever treatments have already been given, there is almost always something that can be done to improve the patient’s quality of the life.

Our goals of care are:

Provide relief from pain and other symptoms
Maximize the quality of life
Provide psyco-social and spiritual care
Provide support to help the family during the client's Illness and through their grief and bereavement.

We focus both on managing pain and other symptoms that can reduce quality of life as well as the needs of family and caregivers. Your care team might include doctors, nurses, social workers, massage therapists, pharmacists, volunteers, psych-social-spiritual clinicians, and chaplains who create a program based on the patient's care plan.

psyco-social and spiritual care working consulting patient

Woman enjoying flowers at end-of-life care facility

Toronto’s Lack of Hospice Beds: A Crisis

The Attorney General of Ontario has recommended 7 end of life care beds for every 100,000 people. Toronto currently has only 20 residential hospice beds to serve a population of more than 2.8 million. As our population grows the circumstances only become more pressing.

Patients must rely on hospitals rather than receive care at home or in a residential hospice and our families bear the brunt. The COVID crisis illustrated the weakness in relying on hospital care. To do their job, hospitals must focus on emergencies, surgery, and disease containment. Hospitals are not designed to provide the care that one deserves at the end of life.

How we solve it

Our approach supports our community with hospice palliative care through:

Keeping people out of hospitals and allowing them to select the care that's best for them
Delivering compassionate and holistic care for the community individualized to the needs of patients and families
Supporting not only physical but mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being to provide total comfort.
Reducing overall burden on Healthcare system and families in need

Fix it

Woman in wheel chair speaking with Toronto Commandery Hospice care giver

Team lead speaking to childeren about bereavement and loss

Our Mission

The Toronto Commandery Hospice is committed to providing exceptional care for residents across Toronto. Our team serves to create a centre of excellence that our community can depend upon. As our communal needs continue to grow we are here to aid, educate, and guide individuals along their journey.

Driven to extend the mandate and possibilities of Hospice-Palliative care we are guided by the following principles.

Respect: Honouring the life and time of everyone, no matter their condition, as life must always be respected.
Empathy: Supporting our community from a place of compassion for their unique needs.
Dignity: Death can be one of the most difficult challenges that individuals and their families will face, and in this time they deserve honour and respect.
Collaboration: No one should face this alone, so we bring together the community to inspire new possibilities of care.