Minding Your Business; 377; Donna Brown, Mesilla Valley Hospice

K-R-WG TV presents Mining Your Business, a look at the people, places, events and issues that impact the business and economy of Southwest New Mexico, with your host, Charles Comer. Hello and welcome to Mining Your Business. This is a show where we explore business, economic development, community resources and events, and issues that impact our region. This week on Mining Your Business, it's an organization that works to bring comfort and compassion to people in the final days of their lives. Here to talk about Macy of Alley Hospice is executive director Don and Brown Donna. Thanks so much for being here. You're very welcome, Charles. Now we always start off with finding out a little bit about yourself and then we're going to get into talking about hospice. So where'd you grow up? Where'd you go to school? What'd you do before you worked for Macy of Alley Hospice? Well I was born in a rural farming community in Missouri and in fact I laugh and tell people

I went to a one room schoolhouse with outdoor toilets. So very rural setting. And you're not kidding when you say that. I'm not kidding when I say that. So did you have to walk to school barefoot uphill in the snow both ways? No, just across the street, very small little town. But we moved out to New Mexico when I was 10. And so kind of grew up here, my dad was a Baptist preacher and stayed in the area. I went to school here at NMSU, graduated and did some teaching. I was a teacher for four years. Really? Where'd you teach? What'd you study? Where'd you teach? Education, I'm sorry. I guess. Special education, right? But I taught at Gadsden, junior high school. Oh, just down the road and taught special ed for four years and decided there had to be an easier way to make a living. So I got into accounting, became a CPA, and did that for a while, and then wound up at Macia Valley Hospice when they were looking for financial manager. Do you think that very background helped you in hospice? A lot of times you can pull knowledge from a previous job and you're surprised how

handy it came in. Was that the case with you? I do feel that. I always say I was kind of uniquely prepared for being the executive director of hospice right now during this time period. So I think all of my background kind of comes together to help me do that. And I have to say that your father seems to have one of my very favorite names, share with everyone out there, your maiden name. My maiden name is Comer, just like yours. Donna Comer, and that wouldn't that have been odd if we ended up getting married, it would have been very uncomfortable. There you go. I swear he's not my brother. Okay, good. I met this stranger. But moving on and shifting into a little more serious note, hospice is a word we've all heard. But what is it exactly? Well I think the best way to describe hospice is that it is a way of care that's designed to focus on the whole person. So of course we provide medical care, but we focus on the emotional and spiritual needs of not only just the patient, but the family, whenever there's someone with a life-limiting

illness. That would be the best way I would describe hospice. Now where does someone come to a point of needing hospice? It's someone who probably has a terminal illness, you know, right? And we are mandated that we do have to have a physician say that the patient, if the disease follows its normal course, will probably live only six months or less. But that doesn't mean the patient has to die in six months. They'll often wonder, oh well if I am alive six months plus one day are they going to kick me off of service? And that's not the case. I think the hardest thing though is it's very hard to predict how long someone is going to live. And so that is a challenge. So what we often tell families is to think about would it surprise you if this family member were not around this time next year? And if the answer is no, that wouldn't surprise me. It's probably time to call hospice. And start planning.

Start planning? I'm going to talk a little more about that as well. Tell us a history of Macia Valley hospice specifically. Well back in 1982, we had a group of concerned citizens, Dr. Terry Meyer, who's now at the Student Health Center here at NMSU. And some of our local nurses got together and said, you know what? We've heard about this thing called hospice. Why don't we see about doing one here in our community? And that's how it started. They were totally volunteer agency. And this was at a time period when hospice nationwide was just getting started. The Medicare hospice benefit only came into play in August of 1982. So really, Macia Valley hospice has been around just as long as the Medicare hospice benefit. So some very far-sighted people. So hospice really didn't start catching on nationwide until the 70s and early 80s? The early 80s actually. In 1979, I think it's when they did a pilot project to kind of test the hospice philosophy here in the United States.

In England, it had been going on since the 60s. So our hospice has been around pretty much as long as the hospice is here in the United States have been. Wow. So tell us a little bit about the nuts and bolts of the organization, number of employees, volunteers, the area you serve, and where your headquarters is? Well our headquarters is at 299 East Montana and if you're on El Paseo, and I always tell people if you're on El Paseo and you know where the Taco Bell is, just turn west there at the Taco Bell. And between the U-Haul and the Taco Bell, go down about a block and a half and we're there on the right-hand side. And that's where our headquarters are. We have about 96 employees and about 115 volunteers. And we're always looking for more volunteers. So we'd love to have 200 volunteers. So we always welcome people who come down. Now do you actually have any beds, any rooms in your facility? And I know a lot of hospice organizations focus on at-home care, usually that's time to shift someone from the hospital to home and they provide hospital beds, medical equipment,

those kind of things set them up with nurse visitations, that kind of stuff. But you guys take it a step further, don't you? We actually do, obviously the majority of our patients are in their own homes. And we do serve all of Doniana County, so we go to Sonland Park, we go to Chaparral, we go to Hatch, everywhere. So most of our patients are in their own homes and we do everything we can to keep the patient in their own home. But we're unique in that we have La Pesada, which is the only free standing hospice house in the state of New Mexico at this point. And we have 18 beds and they are usually full and sometimes we have a waiting list, which is why we are in the middle of an expansion project, adding 12 more beds, a chapel, some family gathering areas. So it's an exciting time for us. How do you come about with that kind of money? It's got to be contributions, grants, those kind of things. How did you come up with the money for this expansion? You know, amazingly enough, that's exactly how we came up with it.

We went out to the community and said, we have this project and originally it was about a $6.2 million project and we're expanding La Pesada. We're building a home care center, landscaping our grounds. We have six acres. And so we just started a campaign and we've raised just right about $6.1 million so far. And most of that has been from contributions from people here in Doniana County. Obviously, we've had some grants from National Foundations. And of course, the one that I think most people hear about is we've got two grants that are $1.2 million and they're a matching grant. So we have to raise the $1.2 million to get the $1.2 million and we're very close. I think we have about $480,000 left to raise to get that $1.2 million. So we're very excited and I think the thing that I tell people, I was just in Washington last week at the National Hospice Conference and they're always amazed that our community steps forward being a poor community and yet they are so dedicated to end-of-life care here in Doniana County which is personally why I believe we have a hospice house and

Albuquerque doesn't and Santa Fe doesn't. It's because our people here in this community are so committed. That's very touching and I don't really know how to respond to that other than move on to the next question. What made you want to get involved with Missy of Alley Hospice? Well actually I have to be honest. I had a little boy and wanted to kind of cut back. I was working actually here at the university as an intern law intern. Wanted to just work part-time and the hospice had an opening for a part-time financial manager. So I went to interview and broke all the rules that you're taught about interviewing. After the interview was over, I say to the executive director, so tell me what is hospice? Because I had no idea. I had not done my homework ahead of going ahead of time which was terrible and she was shocked and horrified that someone with my background would not know what hospice is. So I have to say when I first came, it was just merely looking for a part-time job. But I think what happens at a hospice is you start and you recognize the importance of

the work and then it becomes a passion and what I tell people, because people often say, isn't it a depressing place to work? To me that's the most obvious question. Yeah and to me I go no, not really. We help people at the end of their lives be able to reach their goals and to me that's magic. To be able to help people finish up their business and make sure they're pain-free and comfortable and help the family come together. It's almost self-policing. People that come to hospice just to collect a paycheck don't stay very long. The work is too hard. It requires too much emotion and passion and so now that I'm there, I have to say I came just for a job but I certainly have not stayed for that reason. That's certain, the passion is why you decided to move up and stay on. Certainly not analogous work but we hear in public TV, we don't make a lot of money but it's the passion that keeps us working in the long hours and thank goodness for folks

like you. I think we wouldn't be as good a community without our wonderful hospice organization. Now run us through some of the services, we kind of touched on those a little bit but run us through what you folks have. Well obviously we do offer a team approach to care and the one thing that I think our staff we work with them on is what we want them to do is when they start meeting with the patient and their family is to establish what is that patient's goal or if the patient is not able to say what is the family's goal for that person and then the whole team comes together and tries to help that patient and or family reach those goals. Now to do that we have a whole team. We have our own medical director plus, we have a staff physician and we are actually one of the few organizations that the doctor makes house calls and our doctor Dr. Abramsson is running all over Doniana County visiting patients in their homes. Of course we also have nurses that go out, certified nurse assistants which do all of

the personal care like bathing patients. We have a medical social worker that helps families just with some of the emotional issues and some of the financial issues planning for funerals. Those kinds of things that have to happen that really no one is real comfortable doing. And then of course spiritual support we do provide chaplains for those patients who would like that kind of assistance and then of course our wonderful volunteers who often just go out and sit with the patient so a family member can get away from the house. Go the grocery store or go get their hair done because very often when someone has had a lengthy illness the caregiver has kind of becomes trapped in the house of not feeling like they can leave. So that is the core of what we do as far as personal services and then of course as you mentioned any medical equipment they need, any of the prescription medications they need related to their illness, any medical supplies, all of that is provided by the hospice. At zero cost to the patient and or family there are no copays, no deductibles, obviously

Medicare will cover hospice, Medicaid, the Donanah County Health Services Fund covers hospice as well as most private insurances. And then of course we do have a charity care fund for those patients who can't afford to pay, we take care of them anyway. See I was going to ask do you have something analogous to the indigent fund for the county hospital? Yes we do. And so let me make sure I get this right, somebody comes to you, they don't get a bill. Whatever their insurance, Medicaid, Medicare may cover, obviously depending on their age, that's all you collect. That is what we collect except for the room and board at La Pasada, La Pasada is our hospice house. There's a nightly or weekly charge. A daily charge and what we do for families is try to see what they can financially afford. Obviously if they can afford to pay for the room and board then we collect it. If they cannot then they're allowed to stay and pay whatever they can afford to pay. I mean some patients can pay $5 a month and others can pay the full charge.

We think that's really important to be good stewards of the money. When people donate money to us they are expecting us to use it wisely to take care of people that need help. And so we try to be very good about if for the room and board, if people have the resources then we do ask them to pay for the room and board. But if they don't they get care anyway. Not one person turned away. Right. Not one person turned away. 100% equality and that's the way things should be. The benefits of choosing hospice care versus other options. Well I think, obviously if you ask me, I think hospice care is on the big advocate of hospice. The best choice however, I think the important thing for people to realize is it needs to be what it is that they want because there are people if you say, you know if you were told you had very little time left and you have like a 1% chance of a cure, there are people that would say, you know what I want to fight all the way to the bitter end, I want

to take that 1% chance or that 0.25% chance and I want all the plugs, all the stops pulled out to try to keep me alive. But for those patients, definitely the hospital would be the best option to fight, you know, the fight all the way to the end. For a lot of people though they do say, you know when it becomes evident that most likely cure is not possible, I want to be kept comfortable, I want to change my focus to something else, to making my whatever days I have left the best they can be. And for those people, hospice is the best option in my opinion. Are there other hospice organizations in southern New Mexico, West Texas, you had talked about there's one in Albuquerque, how about in our southern strip of the state? There are other hospices. Amber Care is a home care and hospice organization here in Las Cruces. There is Sierra, home care and hospice out of T or C. Almogordo has a hospice as well as dimming.

So many of the surrounding areas do have hospices in El Paso, I believe there's like seven different hospice organizations. Albuquerque has, I think, 17 hospices. So there are many hospices available, but as I said, we are the only one. And in fact El Paso, I don't believe has a hospice house, which again is amazing. That's amazing. Given, they're from here the population, there's so much larger than Las Cruces. But to be clear, Amber Care is a private, for profit organization. And you folks are, are, no, is it nonprofit, not for profit? I know there's a little bit of a difference, isn't there? Not really, I think it's just semantics. Yeah. Okay. Now, we had talked about indigent funds, you have something very, very similar. Once someone with an illness gets to a point of needing hospice care, things can happen pretty fast. Sure.

But for both the patient and the family, what are some things someone can do ahead of time? While they're healthy. Right. To plan ahead. Well, and I think that's one of the things that, one of the reasons we find it so important to get out in the community and talk about hospice and what we do is, what we want people to do. And in fact, yesterday was National Health Awareness Day, as far as around the issue of advanced directives. So what we encourage people to do is talk with their family members and for themselves and just think through, while I'm healthy, while there's no pending crisis going on, what is it I want? What is it I would want toward the end of my life? Or if I were delivered the bad news that, you know what, I only have four months to live. And, you know, Charles, I think if someone, if your doctor told you, Charles, you have four months to live. And there's really, there medically, there is zero chance of you surviving. It would probably make a difference in the decisions you made in the coming four months of what you would do, where you would go, how you would spend your time.

So we really encourage people ahead of time, think about what would you want, what would you want your care to look like? Where would you want to die? Do you want to be at home? Would you rather be in the hospital plugged up to the machines? And most importantly, filling out those advanced directives and saying, if I get to the point where I can't make decisions for myself, who do I want to make decisions for me? And what kinds of decisions do I want them to make? You know, I want machines, I don't want machines, I want a feeding tube, don't want a feeding tube. What are those decisions? Because unfortunately, someone has to make those decisions. And without the proper direction, you know, families are often left fighting amongst themselves as we saw in the shybo case, or just almost paralyzed because they don't know what to do, or what mom or dad or grandma or grandpa would have wanted. And you touched on exactly what I was hoping you would there at the end, where my late mother, fortunately, she made all those decisions.

She was very clear in her living will and those kind of things, and if she needed more care than the family could provide, she wanted to be an assistant living, she wanted hospice if she became terminal for something. So thank you so much. We only have probably about a minute and a half or so to talk. So let's talk about getting involved. What should someone do? Call 523-4700 and say, I want to get involved, I want to volunteer, and there are many ways you can help. That's exactly what was my next question. You could certainly help in the office. We have a lot of people that want to help, but just don't feel like they could be in direct contact with patients. And there's a whole lot of things they can do. Office work and there's filing and there's errands to be run and papers to be picked up at doctor's offices. There's always landscaping around the place to do. In fact, we had a group of mid-schoolers from Missy Valley Christian School come down and help us transplant plants with this new construction going on. And then, of course, patient care.

There's always a great need for people that are willing to sit with patients and go in and have that direct contact with someone who has a life-limiting illness. And don't necessarily need to be a medical professional to do that. Right. They do not need to do that. Donna, if you can believe it, we're out of time. That's amazing. That's amazing. A wonderful and informative half hour. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you, Charles. Have a good day. Well, it's time again for a weekly piece here on My New Year Business. This is showcased some of the hard-working entrepreneurs and business people in our area. We call it the Greater Lost Cruces Chamber of Commerce, Local Business Feature. Well, for me, I would never have purchased the property, had it not been for the fact that I was going to have live music. That's my main love. I'm saying all my life, and if I couldn't get up there and sing for three hours, it wouldn't be worth it to me.

The hotel was originally built by Chuck and Mercy Walker, and that was in 82 and they opened it up, and it was more of a bed and breakfast than he sold it to the Grizzinski's, and then they sold it to the Blues, and I bought it from the Blues. It needed a lot of attention when I bought it, so I bought it no six, and I totally got it. And remodeled it, the entire hotel. It's very much more of a boutique hotel. We have 14 rooms, we have three different styles of rooms, we have full size. This is our romance pool, it is 1.29 a night. This mirror can be set, and your evening setting, your home setting, office, or a day setting, and it just helps you put your makeup on a little better to set the setting of the environment

that you'll be in. Then queen size with covered veranda, and then we have four rooms, two of which have fireplaces, and then they all have tucuzytops, so it's very romantic. I built it, remodeled it, in the hopes that it would be a romantic getaway, because I think that we don't have enough romance in our lives. And I wanted to help people with that, which is why I do the old standard jazz in the dining room. We have a band every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night, and a piano player on Wednesday, and I'll sing during those times. This course, Mercy Spirit Slown, we've got a wonderful, happy hour, great topist menu. We have great martini specials and cosmopolitan specials. We've been written up in the Santa Fe newspaper, and in our chef, Jacob Hilbert, has been compared to some of the biggest chefs in the country.

In fact, I think the headline was, La Macea Chef takes state by storm. Without being too out there, he's able to combine flavors and textures, and it's just a wonderful dining experience. I think our job is to anticipate the customers' needs before the customer knows they even need it. And that's really a lot of my philosophy, and that we're here to give people a very good time. You know, they're coming into my home, essentially this is my home, and it's like I'm giving a great grand dinner party, and I'm able to make people feel at home, and give them enjoyment, and give them wonderful food and good service, and that's very rewarding.

That just about does it for this week. If you have a question or comment about the show, you can call them in your business hotline at 646-730 or email me at Charles Comer at Yahoo.com. Again, I'd like to thank my guest, Executive Director of Macea Valley Hospice Don and Brown for coming on the show, and thank you so much for watching. I'm Charles Comer, here's hoping you have a great one. Bye bye. You

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