The new head of Chattanooga’s biggest hospice program has spent most of her career in finance, accounting and corporate compliance for privately owned nursing homes and hospice programs in New York, Virginia and Georgia.
But Tracy Wood said she is excited to join the nonprofit Hospice of Chattanooga, which provides an array of palliative and hospice care services to those with life-limiting illnesses in the 18 counties in and around Chattanooga.
Wood succeeded the retiring Dr. Clark Taylor as head of the 250-employee agency in October. She said she is eager to continue to build on the 35-year history of Chattanooga’s biggest hospice, including raising money for a new stand-alone facility to replace the existing 16-bed facility Hospice of Chattanooga has operated for the past six years in East Brainerd.
“We’d like to have a world renown inpatient hospice facility, and one of my goals is to try to help raise the funds to make that happen,” Wood says. “We are definitely a growing organization and, as a not-for-profit, we have the opportunity to provide whatever care a patient needs without the same financial limitations of for-profit firms.”
Hospice of Chattanooga has a $32 million annual budget and raises part of that from fundraisers and contributors who help support Hospice services, including grief counseling for many families not covered by most insurance plans.