INTERVIEW

we have spent much of this year contracting health

insurance companies so that they help cover our work.

How did you put your team together to perform this

demanding job, what is its structure and professional

qualifications?

I am quite surprised. It may be thanks to the positive energy

of the idea of hospice care and the help to people in

the terminal stages of a disease that the multidisciplinary

team who work in our hospice are the most amazing

people. We started with a nurse and a single car; now

there are 30 of us in the core team, 15-20 collaborators

(volunteers and part-time job employees), and we share

eight cars. There are physicians (specializing in adults

or children), nurses, social workers, physiotherapists,

psychologists, psychiatrists, and we cooperate with two

priests, a lawyer, a notary, etc.

A great part of the team consists of employees who

work in fundraising, collecting funds for the medical

team.

Ondrášek was the first hospice to win the accreditation

to educate employees. How many experts in palliative

medicine do you educate annually? Are there many

applicants for this job?

We received the accreditation, the licence to provide

education in Palliative Care from the Ministry of Health

of the Czech Republic. We have also applied for

accreditation in lifelong education in medical care. We

have established our own training centre with the aim

of developing expert education in home hospice care

and palliative medicine with both experts and the lay

public. We educate our own employees and provide

internships and practice to doctors, medical staff, social

workers, and medics in this centre. In 2017, we trained

103 medical workers, 23 social workers, and provided

14 internships for doctors, nurses and social workers.

In addition to the Mobile Hospice, you run Stationary

Hospice for Children. What are its prospects and

capacity?

The Stationary Hospice for Children is the dream of help

to families with ill children come true. The family can

bring their child for the necessary time when the child is

looked after by a doctor, nurses and a physiotherapist.

The staff provide the medical care and expert treatment

(i.e. inhalation, PEG tube care, tracheostomy, etc.) as

well as entertain the kids to make them feel better. The

Stationary Hospice works from 8am to 4pm, allowing

the family to have a rest or go to offices, etc.

In 2018, the Regional Government awarded your

work with the Lady Business award in the “Non-Profit

Organizations” category. What does this success and

award mean to you as a human and a manager?

I am very happy, however, personally I do not

overestimate the award for me; it is an award for all the

team. Everybody must understand that we are still not

able to pay our team the money we would like to and the

sum they deserve. We therefore employ mostly people

who consider this job their mission, who are willing to

put the issues of hospice care and help to others ahead

of themselves. So I am really happy that the idea of

people helping people wins in our case, which is the

most important message in the present world, even

though it may sound like a cliché.

Do companies of our region support your project to

show social responsibility? What can an enterprise do

to help you?

Yes, they do, they support us a lot. Without gifts, grants,

endowments, support from businesses, individual

donors, the Ostrava City Council, the Government of

Moravian-Silesian Region, municipalities, foundations,

and others, we would most probably not be able to

exist. I cannot give you a full list of our donors, but we

are very, very grateful to every single one of them. Gifts

from businesses represent 15% of the total finance.

However, there are various other means of support we

receive from businesses: from the gift of money and

raising money to the purchasing of medical aids (e.g.

electric adjustable beds). Some participate in projects:

contributors may choose from projects and see who

receives their money; this method is proving to be

extremely popular these days.

We’ve organized a few fundraising events, e.g. Daruj

papuče (“Put them in their slippers”), the Doma

(“Home”) campaign, etc., more of which is presented at

www.mhondrasek.cz, as well as on Facebook and other

social networks. Our campaign to raise funds to buy us

another car was very successful as it provided enough

money to buy two vehicles.

Even though legislation gave hospice care the code

in the Medicare Rate Book since January 1, 2018,

the contracts and actual payments are still at the very

beginning, and we already know for sure that these

payments will not yet be sufficient to cover enough of

our operation to enable us to provide our services for

free.

“ ... the idea of people helping people

wins in our case…

”

What legislative changes does Ondrášek need to work

better?

As the Medicare Rate Book has listed hospice care since

January 1, 2018, which we struggled for a few years over,

we nowadays primarily need to improve our contracts

with insurance companies to cover the ambulance

room of palliative medicine, and a physiotherapist.

I have already mentioned that we provide these services

for free, and it is our job to raise the funds to cover the

costs.

Do you have any free time left for relaxation and

leisure? What recent phenomena have made you

happy?

I enjoy playing sports. I love going skiing in Italy.

As for what makes me happy, it is each and every item

of good news. There is so much negativity coming

from the mass media. Yet the principle of humanity is

in helping one another, and all acts of kindness deserve

more media room. You would undoubtedly be surprised

how much good there is in people, and how a single

action may start a great snowball of help.

Mobilní hospic

Ondrášek

Text:

redakce

Foto:

archiv

Mobilní hospic

Ondrášek, o.p.s.

a Aleš Luzar

POSITIV ǀ 4/2018 51