Every Wednesday evening, Richard and Rita Kauffman donate their time, skills and personalities to Hospice House, one of the Midwest’s “homelike” hospice programs for patients in their last months or days of life. The nonprofit aims to help seriously ill individuals of all ages experience nursing care in familiar surroundings.

The one-story house, located in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, is furnished with overstuffed chairs, quilts, appliances and dining sets to allow visitors the ability to share meals or watch movies with their loved ones.

Hospice Alliance, the nonprofit agency that runs the program, will never turn a patient away for lack of payment or family support, said Kris Mickelson, marketing and development manager. The house has eight beds and cares for about 130 patients each year. Although the vast majority of Americans say they wish to die at home, less than 30 percent do. Hospice House may be a fair substitute for patients unable to die at home.

Volunteers or family members often prepare meals based on a patient’s request.

“We are known for cookies. We have people and corporations who come in and bake cookies for us,” Mickelson said. “This house is ideal for families with children, because we also have a family room with TVs, coloring books and video games. We close the door and they can be a little more rowdy.”

Rita, “75-and-a-half,” began volunteering after retiring from teaching in 2002. She was inspired by the idea of helping people die on their own terms and as comfortably as possible.

“It was a natural attraction to spending time with people whose lives were ending,” she said. “It has never gotten depressing for me. Part of the beauty of hospice is that patients and their families, by the very fact that they’re in hospice care, accept that death is on its way. They are sad at times, but not morbid.”

Richard, 73, a retired social worker, usually asks patients for their meal requests and prepares them in the kitchen. “I’m a better cook than Rita. Sometimes a patient wants breakfast for dinner, so we make them bacon and eggs,” he said. “It depends if they feel like eating or not.”

When a patient dies, Rita said she misses him or her like a new friend.

“Our association with them has been close, but short. There is a missing, especially for the patients who’ve been here for months,” she said. “We wonder why so many people come to hospice in their last three of four days of life, when they could have come many months earlier.”

Hospice care is designed to help comfort the seriously ill near the end of life, and it has become increasingly popular in recent years – reaching nearly $14 billion in payments during 2011. The Medicare hospice benefit, established in 1982 to help patients pay for care, is usually provided only to those with a life expectancy of six months or less.

Hospice Alliance was a 2014 Hospice Honors recipient, the only hospice in southeastern Wisconsin to receive the distinction.