(upbeat music) - Folks, let me lead into this segment.

It's an interview that I did with Mike Maron, the President and CEO of Holy Name Medical Center at a place called Villa Marie Clair.

It is connected to Holy Name, one of our underwriters, but Villa Marie Claire is all about end of life, how people live those final days in their life.

How family members who care for them deeply need help, and that's what this organization does.

Mike talks candidly and openly about his own personal experience with his mom, end of life issues.

These are important issues, can't escape them.

An important conversation, check it out.

- Mike, thanks for joining us.

- Thanks for having me.

- This place, Villa Marie Claire, I mean, we've talked about it for so many years.

We talked to.

Dr. Vialotti as well.

I thought I knew.

I thought I had a sense of what it was just by talking about it and seeing pictures.

It's different.

The feel as soon as you walk in is powerful.

Talk about that.

- Yeah, many people have commented on it from when we opened in 2011 for the first time right to today.

When you walk through these doors, there is an energy, a spirit that resides here that makes this place special.

And that is probably the most important ingredient to everything.

So all the beauty that you see around it, the intention inside and outside is to amplify that spirit.

So for those of us that are too busy, too tuned out to pay attention to it, hopefully the surroundings will amplify it enough where you feel it and know that it's real.

- Mike, it's interesting.

We're taping this right before Thanksgiving 2023.

It was just a few weeks ago, it was the third anniversary of my dad passing.

And he passed during COVID.

You lost your mom very recently.

- Yes.

- So we've gone through this, like so many others.

Talking about end of life, dealing with end of life issues and this place.

Talk about that.

- Sure.

When you look at end of life, it is a fact that none of us can escape, right?

We're all destined.

At some point, our lives here are gonna end.

And the question becomes how do they end, in what fashion?

What are those last days like?

So this isn't, this whole place is not about dying.

It's about living.

It's about enjoying.

It's about bringing family and friends together to unite for one last time.

While that time is, we know, coming to an end, it's meant to really live them to its fullest capacity.

To keep people comfortable, to keep them engaged with their family and friends.

Not that they're sedated and stunad.

And so to make those last moments, whether they're days, hours, weeks, as meaningful and rewarding as possible for everybody.

- How do you do that, Mike?

- We do it by the staff, first and foremost, that are here.

They're tremendous.

We do it through the surroundings.

We do it through celebrating with food.

We have some incredible chefs here, and food is a big part of comfort.

The environment's a big part of comfort.

Bringing in all the natural beauty of outdoors between, if you will, those elements of life, earth, air, fire, water.

You'll see water features everywhere, fireplaces everywhere, music everywhere, food everywhere.

This is the sustenance of life.

What we're hoping here is the current generation of people, the survivors, the family, the friends, the community that come to visit, they're the ones we really wanna impact.

You know, New Jersey ranks dead last out of the 50 states as ranked by the Dartmouth Atlas when it comes to spending in the end of life.

- Because?

- The medical profession.

- The establishment, right.

- The establishment, yeah.

Today, the statistic sadly has not changed.

1/3 of all the people that get referred to the Villa die before they get here.

The second third, 'cause we wait so long to make the decision.

And so we send out teams of staff and they do all the assessments and they do the intake.

They expire before they can even leave where they are to come here.

The second third die within 24 hours.

The final third stay for about six weeks.

That middle third, 24 hours of exposure here, most consistent and loudest feedback we get from that group, "Why didn't I know about this sooner?

Why didn't anybody tell me this was an option?"

We should have been here weeks ago.

That's what we wanna try to impact 'cause now all those people going forward, when they know others or themselves who are gonna be impacted by end of life, they now are smarter and wiser to say, "There is an alternative.

There is a better way to do this."

- Mike, we actually had Senator Paul Sarlo on recently, who's been here, understands, appreciates end of life issues.

A big policy question, a human question, in the state legislature.

Senator Joseph Vitali, the chair of the Senate Health Committee, very involved with Senator Sarlo and others.

Do you believe, Mike, that there should be any changes in public policy as it relates to end of life issues, A, and B, the impact that has on societal attitudes?

- I think changing attitudes in education is important.

Is there a policy where you can change, you could help pay for it better, right?

So I think from a policy standpoint, helping support ventures like the Villa Marie Claire.

- End of life care.

- End of life care, right?

Think about it.

This is one of the misnomers, and I went through this with my own family and you have to put it in context.

So my mother recently passed away here, 93 1/2, beautiful long life.

I actually thought we were getting her in early and I was trying to set the stage and use her an example of how it should be.

And it turned out she was only here for two weeks and expired.

So early in my mind, and I'm a more educated mind, wasn't early enough, right?

So we can change by educating, by helping pay for it and supporting it so that there is more venues like the Villa.

- You want more competition.

- Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

The other is this, is where I started going.

So home care and home hospice many tout as that's the holy grail.

Everybody wants to die at home.

Yes and no.

And there is a comfort level at home.

Having been through this personally, that's often- - My dad died at home.

- Yeah, but it's hard, right?

Because home hospice, same thing, you don't get a nurse 24 hours a day.

You get a nurse for a couple hours during the day.

And what happens those other 22 hours?

- [Steve] It's on family.

- It's on family.

And you're not being the son or the spouse or the daughter.

You're being the caregiver.

Realize that at some point, especially those last several weeks, you don't wanna be the caregiver.

You wanna be in your primary relationship with whoever that is.

- The son, the daughter, the brother, the sister, - The spouse, whatever.

Parent often, right?

We see that all too often these days, yeah.

- I have one final question, Mike.

We've known each other a long time.

Professionally rewarding is one thing.

Personally rewarding is another.

Why is it so personally rewarding?

- Because here, it all started with friends and family.

The whole idea of the Villa was born out of a priest who was a very good friend of mine, Father Joe Kukura, who you may have met.

Joe was in healthcare.

He was a well-known beloved priest.

Young, came down with cancer.

Moved in with very, very close friends of his, close friends of mine now, very, very close.

And they had to convert their dining room into a patient room.

And they did it for as long as they could, and they couldn't do it anymore.

And they called me and they said, "Can you help?"

Villa didn't exist.

So what did we do?

We took Joe and we brought him to Holy Name at the hospital and I took a semi-private room and we took the extra bed out and we put in couches and furniture and we tried to make it as warm and homelike as we possibly could and we moved Joe there and he had visitors out the wazoo coming to the hospital.

And it was as nice and as warm a parting as you could possibly have for a man who was just beloved at every level.

And when the sisters who had this property since the 1930s, Sister Maureen Collins was the provincial at the time, and she called and she said, "We can no longer support the Villa Marie Claire.

If we were to give it to you, what would you do with it?"

And I asked Dr. Mendelowitz, I said, "What would you do?"

He said, "Easy, hospice.

We turn it into an inpatient hospice."

- Thank you, Mike.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato has been a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

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