Michael V. Aureli*

Michael Aureli has cared for people for much of his life. For 14 years it was as a Catholic priest. For the past nine years, his mission has been to enhance the quality of life for the terminally ill.

As executive director of Arkansas Hospice, Aureli oversees an organization that has seen phenomenal growth during the past three years. Last year, the end-of-life care center served some 900 dying patients. Aureli has overseen the hospice’s growth from three employees just four years ago to the current level of 150. During those four years, his team has eased the suffering of more than 2,300 patients and families.

Because of that growth, it’s in the top 15 percent of the 3,200 hospice providers in the country in size, annual revenue, annual growth in patients and achievement of fund-raising goals.

The 1968 graduate of Pine Bluff High School says the hospice’s holistic approach to giving physical, emotional, social and spiritual support to both the patient and family appeals to him.

“End-of-life care is a piece of the medical puzzle that’s been missing,” Aureli said. “What do you do with people who cannot be cured? How do you enhance life until its natural end?”

Aureli says his life philosophy is the same as the goal of the hospice – to enhance the quality of life as long as there is life.

Aureli faced the challenge of starting and maintaining two home-based hospice programs, two hospice facilities and a resale shop. To do that the organization had to raise $2 million.

Aureli’s goals for the foundation include developing an end-of-life care campus with a freestanding hospice facility, home-based program offices and education facilities on the hospice’s 10-acre tract in west Little Rock.

Aureli also actively works to promote the hospice movement, helping people in other towns to get hospices started.