A Freeborn County native who started a hospice program that’s now one of the largest in the state has expanded so that it now serves the Albert Lea area.

Heath Bartness, chief operating officer of St. Croix Hospice, said that since 2008 the hospice program has expanded to serve Rochester, Minnetonka, St. Cloud and almost 50 counties in Minnesota and western Wisconsin.

“By expanding to serve the Albert Lea area, we will continue to reach out to patients that are currently not being cared for,” Bartness said.

The company’s mission is to focus on patients, caregivers and family. The hospice program brings personalized, high-quality services to increasingly underserved populations as well anyone in the population that needs end-of-life care.

“It is an honor to be serving the hometown community that I was born and raised in,” Bartness said.

The St. Croix Hospice team manages and brings comfort care to end-stage diseases wherever a patient considers homes. The team provides nursing, music therapy, massage therapy, social work, spiritual care, volunteers, bereavement care and nurse practitioner and physician services.

“St. Croix Hospice was founded on the principal that bigger isn’t better,” Bartness said.