April 19, 2024 • 13 mins
A great conversation with David and Laura with Arkansas Hospice about their services for patients across Arkansas as well as their Party In The Plaza coming up on April 27th featuring live music from lots of Arkansas musical artists, food trucks, a kids zone, and a Care Fair that provides more details about important health services in the area. Find out more at https://www.arkansashospice.org/plaza2024
Have an event, community organization, or topic for the show? Email djtaylor@iheartmedia.com with your details today!
Have an event, community organization, or topic for the show? Email djtaylor@iheartmedia.com with your details today!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome and thanks for tuning in forTalk of the Rock public affairs, community
events, and public services for CentralArkansas from the iHeart Radio studios in Little
Rock. Here's your host, DJTaylor. DJ Taylor in the studio and
I'm joined by David Edwards, thedirector of Communications, and Laura Grimes,
the Communication and event coordinator with ArkansasHospice. How are y'all doing great?
(00:22):
Thanks for having us. Absolutely fantasticArkansas Hospice and incredible organization. You do
so much for taking care of folks. And tell me just a little bit
for those that may not know whatis Arkansas Hospice well. Arkansas Hospice is
the state's largest nonprofit provider of hospiceand pallative care. We serve patients in
(00:44):
forty eight counties in the state ofArkansas, and in addition to serving those
patients who are experienced in life limitingillness or are at end of life,
we also support their families and theircaregivers through that process because it does it's
it takes a whole group of peopleand whole village to weather that process together.
(01:06):
So we really take a holistic approachto supporting patients and their families and
their loved ones. And one ofthe things that I think is most interesting
about this is you are a nonprofit. Now, you are state licensed,
you're Medicaid and Medicare certified, butyou're also a non for profit.
Yes, tell me a little bitabout how that works. Well, what
that means is instead of our carebeing accountable to shareholders, we're accountable to
(01:33):
patients and their families. We dogenerate income based on Medicare Medicaid insurance in
some instances, but all of theoperating revenue goes back into patient care and
expanding our services. One thing thatmany of our listeners here may not be
(01:55):
aware of is we are actually growingour family of care. We're actually calling
ourselves the Arkansas Family of Care.And you mentioned po out of Care a
second ago. But what these additionalservices do is we are trying to reach
patients earlier on in their healthcare journey. And some people may be listening and
(02:15):
think, oh, no, theywant to come get me. No,
no, that's not the case atall. What we are the bottom line
is, what we are about ishelping our fellow Arkansas who are maybe experiencing
chronic disease or cold morbidities live abetter life, and we are coming to
them where they are on their journey. And our goal clinically, socially,
(02:39):
spiritually is to help these patients andtheir families have a better quality of life.
Now it's not up to us todecide the final hour. But one
of the things that I've been herein this organization in almost seven years,
one of the things that is mostrewarding is when you see a family recognize
(02:59):
that they're as a disease and say, our palwat of care can come in
and just help them with their symptoms, help them manage their care, coordinate
care between different providers. And sowe have patients that have been actually involved
in our family to care for years. And the studies show that when you
(03:19):
can help the family caregiver, whenyou can control symptoms, that many times
these patients will actually live longer.Not to mention the fact that they have
all this support and a much betterquality of life. So we are all
about helping people feel better. AndI do want to talk about this for
a second because there are a lotof different folks that make the wheels turn
(03:43):
at Arkansas Hospice, including volunteers.Notice on the website, there's a whole
area about volunteering. How does thatwork? That's correct. So hospice when
it started in this country, startedas a volunteer run of health care.
So that's something that's ingrained in inhospice care in general and in who we
(04:04):
are at Arkansas Hospice. It's partof the Medicare requirement five percent of your
patient care is required to be providedby volunteers. So our Arkansas Hospice has
a robust volunteer department. They're allwe are always recruiting new volunteers for a
(04:25):
lot of different purposes. Not allof those are directly interacting with patients.
There's there's lots of ways that peoplewho are interested in supporting people that are
on their end of life journey canget involved as a volunteer in a way
that they're comfortable. So office work, yeah, there's you can help with
office work. There's we have wehave volunteers that help with clerical needs.
(04:46):
We have volunteers that all patients ortheir FAMI or their caregivers and just make
sure they have everything they need.We have volunteers that sit at the bedside
with patients that don't have any familyand that are there for those final moments.
It's a it's a really impactful waythat people can serve. We're actually
honoring one of those volunteers at ourupcoming event and his name is Bruce Holsted,
(05:12):
and he is a long term hospicevolunteer and it just to hear him
talk about what that, what thatmeans to him is it's very moving and
it's it's truly a calling. Soif you're if someone is interested in becoming
a volunteer, they can visit ArkansasHospice dot org and see when there are
trainings. We have volunteers across ourservice area all over the state and we
(05:39):
are always looking for people that wantto help serve the mission in that way.
So it's not necessarily that you haveto have some sort of background in
medical health or nursing or anything likethat. There are different jobs for anyone
that would like to volunteer if you'rejust looking to help, if you're looking
to serve the community, to helpyour neighbors here in Arkansas. On super
(06:00):
easy Arkansas Hospice dot org, youcan sign up for volunteering and find out
more about Arkansas Hospice in general.What services they offer, and maybe you
know somebody or maybe you have afamily member that's in need of hospice care.
That's a great way to find outabout that. Another great way to
find out about that is coming upon April twenty seventh with Party at the
(06:24):
Plaza. This is gonna be abig time down on Main Street. I'm
excited for this. You had alot going on. We're excited to be
back for our third year of Partyat the Plaza. Party at the Plaza
is our largest annual event. Itis we raise funds for Arkansas Hospice,
but we also educate the community aboutwhat we are and what we do and
(06:44):
the services we offer, and bringtogether a lot of other care providers that
reach a similar group of people.So it's a really fun music festival for
a great cause, and we thinkwe're knocking it out of the park this
year. It's going to be abig one. Absolutely. Now, tell
me you were about all the differentmedical services and things like that, Tell
me about this care Fare. Thecare Fair is something we started last year.
(07:10):
It is basically a one stop locationwhere you can interact with all of
the different services at Arkansas Hospice offers, whether that's hospice, palliative care,
in home, senior care, advancedcare, our Volunteer Department, our therapy
dogs, all of there's a widearray of Arkansas hospice services. But we're
also bringing it together other nonprofits andorganizations and companies that serve similar needs,
(07:34):
things like Alzheimer's Arkansas, the RedCross, AARP. There's a lot of
services that are out there for peoplethat maybe appropriate for hospice care or palative
care, and we want to beable to pull all of those together so
that people can learn about all ofthem in one setting. We really feel
like knowing what's available before you needit makes making those decisions easier, gives
(08:01):
you your armed with information so thatyou know what you need to do and
who you need to call when you'rein a stressful situation. Absolutely. And
then of course this is not justthe care Fair, this is also we're
talking about, Uh. There's alot of art going on out there,
food going on, food trucks andthings like that. You want to name
(08:22):
drop feel free. I love ourfood trucks here in Central lob Lolly Creamery
of course be there. We havea wonderful catfish and barbecue from Uncle Tim's
food truck out of the Conway.They also provide our employee appreciation picnic at
that. At this event, we'llhave Whole Hog barbecue in the VIP tent.
(08:43):
We'll have Crumble cookies from North LittleRock. It's gonna be, uh,
it's gonna be. There's gonna beyou won't you won't be sure of
finding something to eat or something todrink. It all right, nice,
well, and you know you're talkingabout ice cream, you're talking about cookies.
You know the kids are going tobe super excited about that. You've
got a lot of fun stuff forthe whole family, kids included. We
(09:03):
have tons of kids' activities in ourKids Zone. We'll be bringing in the
Museum of Discovery to do some demonstrations. We've got princesses and characters from Star
Wars that'll be joining us. OurGenta branch of the Layman Library. We'll
be doing some activities for kids.THEA Foundation will be there with us to
do some art projects and face paintand sidewalk chalk. It's going to be
(09:30):
The Kid Zone is always really hoppin'at party at the Plaza, and then
it wouldn't be complete if I didn'tmention all the live music, nobody.
Tyler Kinch's going to be out there. My friend Bonnie Montgomery's going to be
out there. Mac Royals is outthere. Live music sounds like pretty much
all day. What time does theparty at the Plaza kickoff on twenty seven?
(09:50):
The event begins at two pm andwe'll have live music starts at two
pm with the Rock town Sparks andwe will be running until about nine thirty
or ten uh with Tyler Kinch.Every one of our artists this year is
an Arkansas connected artist. The themeof this year's festival is Arkansas Roots,
so we've got really some of thebest and brightest in in Arkansas music,
(10:11):
some amazing country artists. You knowyou you mentioned by Macroyals, Oh sorry,
Macroyals is not a country that's okayand he's awesome. From from the
Voice and Bias from from the Voiceis a country artist from Team Gwyn that
both of those gentlemen made it tothe top nine on the most recent season
(10:35):
of the Voice. So we're reallyexcited to have them with us for this
and they're very excited to be homefor it. And then of course Arkansas
country music Entertainer of the Year TylerKinch is going to be closing us out
and Biju singing some soul in Rand B. It's gonna be h.
It's going to be pretty phenomenal andpeople are very excited to see some of
(10:56):
these local treasures. Oh yeah,a wide variety of music stylings all throughout
the day. It is a funevent for the whole family and of course
helping to raise money for Arkansas Hospice. Now, this is going on on
Main Street at our Genta Plaza andyou said it kicks off at two o'clock.
It's a free admission. There's goingto be reserve seating for some of
(11:16):
the musical acts as well. Doyou need to like RSVP or anything?
Would love for you to RSVP atparty Atthplaza dot org. Anyone who pre
registers to attend the event, evenif you're getting a free general admission ticket,
is entered into one of five drawingsthroughout the day for some fun prizes.
There are VIP passes available as wellas some paid reserve seating. If
(11:37):
you don't want to have to bringyour own lawn chair, there are some
reserve seating available as well, butI mean it's a great it's a great
event to drop in and spend sometime, stay the whole time, or
come and go. There's something foreverybody. Well, I know that everybody's
looking forward to the weekends now thatit's getting warm and things like that.
But you know what, you goout there and you are just going to
(11:58):
have so much fun, so manydifferent things to do for the whole family.
Let me ask is it pet friendly, because a lot of folks are
gonna ask, are just a plazais pet friendly? And we frequently have
dogs that join us for party atthe plaza, and actually some of our
Arkansas Hospitals therapy dogs will be thereat the event for people to meet and
(12:18):
get some snuggles from a well,okay, all right, so a little
friendly snuggle with the therapy dogs.That that's gonna be fantastic. Bring those
leashes and bring your four footed friendswith you and enjoy a great time party
at the Plaza. This is comingup April twenty seventh, starting at two
pm going till about nine or teno'clock. So no matter what you got
(12:39):
planned, make sure that that isa part of your schedule. Coming up
on the twenty seventh is gonna bea great time. And like I said,
get out here on those local Arkansasartists, enjoy the great art work
at those food trucks. I mean, how can you miss lob Lolly Come
on now and crumble cookies and greatcatfish and stuff like that going on.
(13:00):
The whole Hog Barbecue you said wasin the VIP section as well, So
a lot of fun stuff and it'sall to help Arkansas Hospice. And if
you want to help out, maybeas a volunteer, or if you can't
make it by on the twenty seventh, maybe you're out of town, but
you still want to donate monetarily,you can do that as well. Arkansashospice
dot org. David Laura, thanky'all so much for coming in. Thank
(13:22):
you, appreciate you very much andlooking forward to us seeing y'all next weekend.
That's awesome. Thanks for listening toTalk of the Rock public affairs and
community events from the iHeartRadio studios inLittle Rock. Be sure to subscribe to
this podcast and listen next week aswe talk to more guests about public service,
local charities, and events going onin your neighborhood.
Welcome and thanks for tuning in forTalk of the Rock public affairs, community
events, and public services for CentralArkansas from the iHeart Radio studios in Little
Rock. Here's your host, DJTaylor. DJ Taylor in the studio and
I'm joined by David Edwards, thedirector of Communications, and Laura Grimes,
the Communication and event coordinator with ArkansasHospice. How are y'all doing great?
(00:22):
Thanks for having us. Absolutely fantasticArkansas Hospice and incredible organization. You do
so much for taking care of folks. And tell me just a little bit
for those that may not know whatis Arkansas Hospice well. Arkansas Hospice is
the state's largest nonprofit provider of hospiceand pallative care. We serve patients in
(00:44):
forty eight counties in the state ofArkansas, and in addition to serving those
patients who are experienced in life limitingillness or are at end of life,
we also support their families and theircaregivers through that process because it does it's
it takes a whole group of peopleand whole village to weather that process together.
(01:06):
So we really take a holistic approachto supporting patients and their families and
their loved ones. And one ofthe things that I think is most interesting
about this is you are a nonprofit. Now, you are state licensed,
you're Medicaid and Medicare certified, butyou're also a non for profit.
Yes, tell me a little bitabout how that works. Well, what
that means is instead of our carebeing accountable to shareholders, we're accountable to
(01:33):
patients and their families. We dogenerate income based on Medicare Medicaid insurance in
some instances, but all of theoperating revenue goes back into patient care and
expanding our services. One thing thatmany of our listeners here may not be
(01:55):
aware of is we are actually growingour family of care. We're actually calling
ourselves the Arkansas Family of Care.And you mentioned po out of Care a
second ago. But what these additionalservices do is we are trying to reach
patients earlier on in their healthcare journey. And some people may be listening and
(02:15):
think, oh, no, theywant to come get me. No,
no, that's not the case atall. What we are the bottom line
is, what we are about ishelping our fellow Arkansas who are maybe experiencing
chronic disease or cold morbidities live abetter life, and we are coming to
them where they are on their journey. And our goal clinically, socially,
(02:39):
spiritually is to help these patients andtheir families have a better quality of life.
Now it's not up to us todecide the final hour. But one
of the things that I've been herein this organization in almost seven years,
one of the things that is mostrewarding is when you see a family recognize
(02:59):
that they're as a disease and say, our palwat of care can come in
and just help them with their symptoms, help them manage their care, coordinate
care between different providers. And sowe have patients that have been actually involved
in our family to care for years. And the studies show that when you
(03:19):
can help the family caregiver, whenyou can control symptoms, that many times
these patients will actually live longer.Not to mention the fact that they have
all this support and a much betterquality of life. So we are all
about helping people feel better. AndI do want to talk about this for
a second because there are a lotof different folks that make the wheels turn
(03:43):
at Arkansas Hospice, including volunteers.Notice on the website, there's a whole
area about volunteering. How does thatwork? That's correct. So hospice when
it started in this country, startedas a volunteer run of health care.
So that's something that's ingrained in inhospice care in general and in who we
(04:04):
are at Arkansas Hospice. It's partof the Medicare requirement five percent of your
patient care is required to be providedby volunteers. So our Arkansas Hospice has
a robust volunteer department. They're allwe are always recruiting new volunteers for a
(04:25):
lot of different purposes. Not allof those are directly interacting with patients.
There's there's lots of ways that peoplewho are interested in supporting people that are
on their end of life journey canget involved as a volunteer in a way
that they're comfortable. So office work, yeah, there's you can help with
office work. There's we have wehave volunteers that help with clerical needs.
(04:46):
We have volunteers that all patients ortheir FAMI or their caregivers and just make
sure they have everything they need.We have volunteers that sit at the bedside
with patients that don't have any familyand that are there for those final moments.
It's a it's a really impactful waythat people can serve. We're actually
honoring one of those volunteers at ourupcoming event and his name is Bruce Holsted,
(05:12):
and he is a long term hospicevolunteer and it just to hear him
talk about what that, what thatmeans to him is it's very moving and
it's it's truly a calling. Soif you're if someone is interested in becoming
a volunteer, they can visit ArkansasHospice dot org and see when there are
trainings. We have volunteers across ourservice area all over the state and we
(05:39):
are always looking for people that wantto help serve the mission in that way.
So it's not necessarily that you haveto have some sort of background in
medical health or nursing or anything likethat. There are different jobs for anyone
that would like to volunteer if you'rejust looking to help, if you're looking
to serve the community, to helpyour neighbors here in Arkansas. On super
(06:00):
easy Arkansas Hospice dot org, youcan sign up for volunteering and find out
more about Arkansas Hospice in general.What services they offer, and maybe you
know somebody or maybe you have afamily member that's in need of hospice care.
That's a great way to find outabout that. Another great way to
find out about that is coming upon April twenty seventh with Party at the
(06:24):
Plaza. This is gonna be abig time down on Main Street. I'm
excited for this. You had alot going on. We're excited to be
back for our third year of Partyat the Plaza. Party at the Plaza
is our largest annual event. Itis we raise funds for Arkansas Hospice,
but we also educate the community aboutwhat we are and what we do and
(06:44):
the services we offer, and bringtogether a lot of other care providers that
reach a similar group of people.So it's a really fun music festival for
a great cause, and we thinkwe're knocking it out of the park this
year. It's going to be abig one. Absolutely. Now, tell
me you were about all the differentmedical services and things like that, Tell
me about this care Fare. Thecare Fair is something we started last year.
(07:10):
It is basically a one stop locationwhere you can interact with all of
the different services at Arkansas Hospice offers, whether that's hospice, palliative care,
in home, senior care, advancedcare, our Volunteer Department, our therapy
dogs, all of there's a widearray of Arkansas hospice services. But we're
also bringing it together other nonprofits andorganizations and companies that serve similar needs,
(07:34):
things like Alzheimer's Arkansas, the RedCross, AARP. There's a lot of
services that are out there for peoplethat maybe appropriate for hospice care or palative
care, and we want to beable to pull all of those together so
that people can learn about all ofthem in one setting. We really feel
like knowing what's available before you needit makes making those decisions easier, gives
(08:01):
you your armed with information so thatyou know what you need to do and
who you need to call when you'rein a stressful situation. Absolutely. And
then of course this is not justthe care Fair, this is also we're
talking about, Uh. There's alot of art going on out there,
food going on, food trucks andthings like that. You want to name
(08:22):
drop feel free. I love ourfood trucks here in Central lob Lolly Creamery
of course be there. We havea wonderful catfish and barbecue from Uncle Tim's
food truck out of the Conway.They also provide our employee appreciation picnic at
that. At this event, we'llhave Whole Hog barbecue in the VIP tent.
(08:43):
We'll have Crumble cookies from North LittleRock. It's gonna be, uh,
it's gonna be. There's gonna beyou won't you won't be sure of
finding something to eat or something todrink. It all right, nice,
well, and you know you're talkingabout ice cream, you're talking about cookies.
You know the kids are going tobe super excited about that. You've
got a lot of fun stuff forthe whole family, kids included. We
(09:03):
have tons of kids' activities in ourKids Zone. We'll be bringing in the
Museum of Discovery to do some demonstrations. We've got princesses and characters from Star
Wars that'll be joining us. OurGenta branch of the Layman Library. We'll
be doing some activities for kids.THEA Foundation will be there with us to
do some art projects and face paintand sidewalk chalk. It's going to be
(09:30):
The Kid Zone is always really hoppin'at party at the Plaza, and then
it wouldn't be complete if I didn'tmention all the live music, nobody.
Tyler Kinch's going to be out there. My friend Bonnie Montgomery's going to be
out there. Mac Royals is outthere. Live music sounds like pretty much
all day. What time does theparty at the Plaza kickoff on twenty seven?
(09:50):
The event begins at two pm andwe'll have live music starts at two
pm with the Rock town Sparks andwe will be running until about nine thirty
or ten uh with Tyler Kinch.Every one of our artists this year is
an Arkansas connected artist. The themeof this year's festival is Arkansas Roots,
so we've got really some of thebest and brightest in in Arkansas music,
(10:11):
some amazing country artists. You knowyou you mentioned by Macroyals, Oh sorry,
Macroyals is not a country that's okayand he's awesome. From from the
Voice and Bias from from the Voiceis a country artist from Team Gwyn that
both of those gentlemen made it tothe top nine on the most recent season
(10:35):
of the Voice. So we're reallyexcited to have them with us for this
and they're very excited to be homefor it. And then of course Arkansas
country music Entertainer of the Year TylerKinch is going to be closing us out
and Biju singing some soul in Rand B. It's gonna be h.
It's going to be pretty phenomenal andpeople are very excited to see some of
(10:56):
these local treasures. Oh yeah,a wide variety of music stylings all throughout
the day. It is a funevent for the whole family and of course
helping to raise money for Arkansas Hospice. Now, this is going on on
Main Street at our Genta Plaza andyou said it kicks off at two o'clock.
It's a free admission. There's goingto be reserve seating for some of
(11:16):
the musical acts as well. Doyou need to like RSVP or anything?
Would love for you to RSVP atparty Atthplaza dot org. Anyone who pre
registers to attend the event, evenif you're getting a free general admission ticket,
is entered into one of five drawingsthroughout the day for some fun prizes.
There are VIP passes available as wellas some paid reserve seating. If
(11:37):
you don't want to have to bringyour own lawn chair, there are some
reserve seating available as well, butI mean it's a great it's a great
event to drop in and spend sometime, stay the whole time, or
come and go. There's something foreverybody. Well, I know that everybody's
looking forward to the weekends now thatit's getting warm and things like that.
But you know what, you goout there and you are just going to
(11:58):
have so much fun, so manydifferent things to do for the whole family.
Let me ask is it pet friendly, because a lot of folks are
gonna ask, are just a plazais pet friendly? And we frequently have
dogs that join us for party atthe plaza, and actually some of our
Arkansas Hospitals therapy dogs will be thereat the event for people to meet and
(12:18):
get some snuggles from a well,okay, all right, so a little
friendly snuggle with the therapy dogs.That that's gonna be fantastic. Bring those
leashes and bring your four footed friendswith you and enjoy a great time party
at the Plaza. This is comingup April twenty seventh, starting at two
pm going till about nine or teno'clock. So no matter what you got
(12:39):
planned, make sure that that isa part of your schedule. Coming up
on the twenty seventh is gonna bea great time. And like I said,
get out here on those local Arkansasartists, enjoy the great art work
at those food trucks. I mean, how can you miss lob Lolly Come
on now and crumble cookies and greatcatfish and stuff like that going on.
(13:00):
The whole Hog Barbecue you said wasin the VIP section as well, So
a lot of fun stuff and it'sall to help Arkansas Hospice. And if
you want to help out, maybeas a volunteer, or if you can't
make it by on the twenty seventh, maybe you're out of town, but
you still want to donate monetarily,you can do that as well. Arkansashospice
dot org. David Laura, thanky'all so much for coming in. Thank
(13:22):
you, appreciate you very much andlooking forward to us seeing y'all next weekend.
That's awesome. Thanks for listening toTalk of the Rock public affairs and
community events from the iHeartRadio studios inLittle Rock. Be sure to subscribe to
this podcast and listen next week aswe talk to more guests about public service,
local charities, and events going onin your neighborhood.
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