Hospice is specialized medical care, where we care for not just the patient but the family as well. With hospice your loved one and family will receive support from a team of professionals dedicated to providing a care plan tailored to your family and your loved one’s wishes.
Our highly skilled medical team works hand-in-hand with our compassionate team of social workers and chaplains to provide care that encompasses all aspects of the patient and family dynamic.
Sarah Crutchfield
Owner/Administrator
Sarah Crutchfield, Owner & Administrator of High Desert Hospice, started out in the medical field at age 15 as a volunteer candy striper. She went on to become a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) and from there a respiratory and hemodialysis therapist. As a hemodialysis therapist, she was a member of the pancreas and kidney transplant team. After 8 years as a therapist, Sarah began her career in hospice as a community liaison. Sarah worked as a community liaison for 12 years with several different hospice companies. During that time Sarah continued to feel compelled to develop a better way, a more compassionate and caring way to offer hospice services, which led to the dream and subsequent creation of High Desert Hospice.
Sarah truly believed hospice could be done better. She believed patient’s needs could be met more effectively. Sarah believed families could be provided more extensive care and support, and she believed that hospice employees and volunteers could be treated with more respect and sympathy for the work that they do.
Sarah has expressed that over the years medicine has become so commercialized and has lost its personal touch. With this drive for change in her core, Sarah founded High Desert Hospice. The organization was created with care and compassion as it’s primary focus. As a family owned and locally operated organization, High Desert Hospice puts the care and compassion back into hospice.
Sarah has renewed a childhood passion and is living the farm life once again. Along with adoring her palomino Penelope, Sarah is over the moon for her six Mastiff’s (Batman, Lilly, Carson, Gunther, Sable and Portia), her large tribe of goats and is committed to bringing longhorns back to New Mexico!
Katelynn Martin
Director
Katelynn Martin, Director of High Desert Hospice and daughter of Sarah Crutchfield, was raised in a household with a heart for hospice! Katelynn has shared her mother’s vision and passion for hospice since she was very young.
Katelynn began as a hospice and assisted living volunteer when she was just 8 years old and has always known that she would someday be making a life long career out of serving in the hospice community.
Along with the primary daily administrative responsibilities of the office, Katelynn is on call after hours for High Desert Hospice and is dedicated to meeting the immediate needs of patients and their families and/or caregivers with an immediate response 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Katelynn has two children that keep her and her husband very busy. You can often find Katelynn’s family outside playing or working with Dad in the shop. Katelynn can be found curled up with a good book in her spare time or advocating for her autistic son and assisting with his program involvement.
Along with Katelynn’s dedication to her position as Director for High Desert Hospice, she is also very committed to her position as Director for the MAID program.
Kimberly Summers
Director of Nursing
Kimberly Summers has been serving the hospice community for six years in Albuquerque and surrounding areas. Kimberly breathes compassion into High Desert Hospice as the Director of Nursing. Kimberly’s genuine passion is to fully validate and acknowledge what a hospice patient and their family and/or caregiver are going through when faced with a life limiting illness.
Kimberly is also committed to her role as the person who instructs and guides the family/caregiver and High Desert Hospice’s team of nurses and nursing assistants through every step of the hospice process.
Kimberly considers it a crucial matter to inform and educate all parties involved in the hospice process on what to expect during the progression of a patient’s illness, as well as ensuring that the patient receives the utmost attention and care. Kimberly is dedicated to a patient’s comfort EVERY step of the way.
Kimberly loves her family immensely and enjoys her dogs, parrots and her affinity for designing. Kimberly ‘pays it forward’ every chance she gets by loving on and helping within the hospice community.
Cynthia Estrada
Assistant Director of Nursing
Cynthia Estrada began serving in the hospice community as a volunteer three years ago. As her love for hospice grew, so did her aspiration to serve in a greater capacity. Cynthia made the decision to initialize a career in hospice shortly after her work as a Certified Nursing Assistant began at High Desert Hospice. It was then that Cynthia started focusing on the long-term goal of registered nursing so she could care for hospice patients and their families/caregivers on a deeper level.
High Desert Hospice is excited to announce that Cynthia has successfully completed her Registered Nursing Program and has been promoted to Assistant Director of Nursing.
Cynthia is fully committed to providing stability and a high level of care to patients facing a life limiting illness. Meeting the needs, both physical and emotional, of the patients and family/caregivers is of the utmost importance to Cynthia. Learning of a patient’s life experiences, meeting and interacting with their families and/or caregivers is certainly a passion of Cynthia’s.
Cynthia believes it a privilege to have the opportunity to work in hospice and to have the honor of being a part of such a vital service every single day.
Cynthia enjoys camping and sports. Cynthia says she has ‘lots of kids and just as many pets’ and loves them all dearly. Cynthia likes being at home and working on projects there with her partner and family.
Michelle Martin
Operations Manager/Admissions Coordinator
Michelle has transitioned to the role of Facility Manager for High Desert Hospice while maintaining her volunteer coordination and recruiting responsibilities. The vision of High Desert Hospice which is excellence in patient and family care is Michelle’s passion and working with High Desert’s exceptional team to continually evolve that vision is her daily focus.
The High Desert Hospice Volunteer Program is a crucial element in providing the level of patient and family care we are striving for. As Volunteer Coordinator, Michelle continually looks for opportunities to highlight the many and varied volunteer opportunities that are available through our service organization, as well as bring greater levels of development to the phenomenal volunteer staff of High Desert Hospice through extensive training and interactive monthly volunteer meetings.
Michelle’s heart belongs to her grandangels and in her spare time is Momma to a Yorkiepoo & Shih Tzu and has a passion for photography, writing and painting.
Clinical Liaison Team
Left: Caesar Winters | Right: Dianna Garcia
The Clinical Liaison Team of High Desert Hospice is a bridge to expanding the horizon of our interaction with hospice patients and their families in Albuquerque and surrounding areas. Our team is continually reaching out and sharing hospice educational information and material, as well as partnering with medical professionals and senior communities to match the hospice services of High Desert with the needs in our communities.
Caesar Winters is the High Desert Hospice Clinical Liaison. Caesar has worked in hospice for over five years. Hospice holds a very special place in Caesar’s heart. Also having been a charge nurse at Lovelace Hospital, Caesar’s life passion is definitely healthcare! Caesar has a passion for making his patients feel supported and well taken care of. Caesar takes great pride in his responsibilities as a registered nurse and loves to go above and beyond for his community.
Caesar attended Pima Medical Institute to obtain his nursing degree and got his nursing license in 2017.
In his spare hours, Caesar spends time camping at Elephant Butte Lake as well as enjoys target practice. Caesar also has a unique buddy in Sammy his dingo pup!
Registered Nurse Case Managers and Licensed Practical Nurses
Being able to maintain an excellent standard of patient healthcare after a life limiting or terminal diagnosis, without going outside the home can be difficult. Our High Desert Hospice team of Registered Nurse Case Managers and Licensed Practical Nurses bring outstanding medical care right to our patients’ bedside.
The primary concern of High Desert Hospice RN’s and LPN’s is to ensure that our patients can remain living independently and comfortably for as long as possible during the progression of an illness. It is also the goal of High Desert Hospice to tailor the level of care and pain management to the individual patient, family and caregiver’s wishes and our Registered Nurse Case Managers and Licensed Practical Nurses are the ones to assess and administer that care, as vital members of the patients care team. Generally, a Registered Nurse Case Manager or Licensed Practical Nurse will make patient visits 2 or 3 times per week however, the number of visits is solely based on the needs of the patient, family and/or caregiver.
We at High Desert Hospice seek Registered Nurse Case Managers and Licensed Practical Nurses who truly have a heart for hospice care and are willing to go above and beyond to attend to the needs of our patients. Your family member will be given the absolute best at-home healthcare available while in the care of our Registered Nurse Case Managers and Licensed Practical Nurses!
Certified Nursing Assistants
Our hospice team members are all heroic elements in a patient’s day-to-day existence while enduring a life limiting or terminal illness however, when an individual is bed bound or restricted in their mobility, it can become quite a challenge to navigate personal hygiene tasks. Even eating can be laborious at best which can create a high level of patient frustration. Our team of Certified Nursing Assistants can step in and make all the difference in a patient’s daily existence by significantly improving their daily hygiene and meal routine, thus increasing the patient’s quality of daily life.
At High Desert Hospice, our team of Certified Nursing Assistants go through rigorous training in many levels of patient care. Our CNA’s are experts in every aspect of patient grooming while the patient is in a state of limited mobility. Certified Nursing Assistants also have the ability to assist with patient feeding and are well equipped to assess the nutritional and supplemental needs of our patients.
High Desert Hospice expects the most out of our CNA team, so you can rest assured that your family member is getting the same level of daily care from our team that you would give them yourself.
Chaplaincy
From prior to the initial diagnosis, a life-limiting or terminal illness can put, not only a physical strain, but an emotional strain on the patient, family and/or caregivers involved. High Desert’s team of chaplains have a heart for providing the utmost in patient, family and caregiver guidance and support, both emotional and spiritual, during the progression of an illness and well beyond a patient’s passing.
The High Desert Hospice seasoned team of chaplains are committed to spending whatever time is necessary to ensure that the emotional and spiritual needs of the patient, family and caregivers are discovered and addressed with a high degree of empathy and attentiveness.
Working well within the interdisciplinary team structure of High Desert Hospice is also of the utmost importance to our chaplains to ensure that the blending of all disciplines within our hospice community occurs synergistically, giving the team cohesiveness necessary to bring excellent holistic care to all who are experiencing a patient illness.
Our chaplains are available 24/7 to come alongside our patients, families, and caregivers with emotional and spiritual comfort, guidance and compassion that will ease the difficulty that can occur prior to and during a life-limiting or terminal illness and well beyond the passing of those we love.
We want to thank the hospice staff for your care of Lois, particularly this past six months. She often spoke of you all and how much she appreciated your care, concern and support. Knowing that you were there for her, and were only a text of call away, made it easier to leave after each visit. You are such a professional, caring group of people who perform a difficult job with love – like family.
Thank you, thank you for being there!
– Carolyn & Jim Terry
Social Workers
Throughout the progression of a life-limiting illness, the patient, family and/or caregiver will often need direction and assistance to navigate within the healthcare and government systems, as well as locating resources in their community that can bring additional support.
At High Desert Hospice, our team of highly qualified social workers come alongside patients and their families and support network to significantly lighten their load by ensuring that their hospice care goals are not only met but exceeded.
Responsibilities included within the realm of a High Desert Hospice Social Worker’s focus is:
The only goal of the High Desert Hospice Social Worker Team is to ensure an excellent level of care through giving insight, support, assistance, and recommendations that will greatly enhance the life-limiting illness experience for all parties involved.