Page 8 - Healthcare Heroes 2025

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A P R O G R A M O F B U S I N E S S W E S T & H E A L T H C A R E N E W S
Yee family members and guests cut the ribbon on the Andy Yee Palliative
Care Unit in May.
Yee, working with Picknelly, coordinated meal donations
for employees at Mercy and other hospitals during the
pandemic.
But that’s a good place to start because those efforts
reflected Yee’s deep respect for Mercy, healthcare workers
in general, and, eventually, the doctors and nurses who
treated him.
“Andy really had an affection for this hospital; he could
have gone anywhere for his care, but he chose this place
because of that guy over there,” said Picknelly, gesturing
toward Glynn. “People encouraged him to go elsewhere; he
didn’t. He said, ‘I’m staying here; the people at Mercy are
awesome, and Dr. Glynn is the best.”
This respect was repaid by those at the hospital bending
the rules, if you will, for Yee and his family during his stay
in the ICU, meaning the rules regarding how many people
could visit him at one time, how long they could stay, and
how they were able to make Andy feel more at home by
bringing some of his home to his room in the ICU.
In other words, helping him achieve a ‘good death.’
These actions inspired Sarah Yee to want to do something
to thank those at Mercy and help others facing oncology
care. One thought early on was to gift an infusion suite for
the cancer center in Andy’s name. But eventually, sights
were set much higher, on creating a palliative care unit.
“We were given the opportunity to make that a
comfortable space for our family that week he was here,”
Sarah recalled, referring to his room in the ICU. “And I thought, ‘wouldn’t it be nice
if other families could have that opportunity as well?’”
So there was an initial conversation with Glynn, who has long understood the
need for a unit devoted to palliative care and was more than amenable to the idea.
He also understood that, unlike putting Yee’s name on an infusion suite, this would
them to come together and make this ambitious undertaking reality.
require a collaborative effort to address the many facets of this project — especially
“All of this is because of Andy and the people who loved him,” said Yee’s
fundraising, design, and, eventually, operations.
friend and business partner Peter Picknelly, chairman of Peter Pan Bus Lines.
And for the fundraising side, those duties fell to Ravosa, owner of a public
“Mayor [Domenic] Sarno stepped to the plate, the governor stepped to the plate,
relations and consulting firm, who accepted the assignment even as it kept
the lieutenant governor, the business community, all because of Andy and this
changing and growing in scope, from initial estimates of $100,000 to the eventual
institution, which helped him so much.”
total of $1.5 million as the cost of construction and materials kept climbing after
In truth, the palliative care unit would not have happened without everyone in
COVID.
that room working together to create a vision and then make it reality. And all
those individuals would be quick to note that getting the doors open was just the
first chapter in this story. The next ones involve operating it in the compassionate,
Overall, the three-year effort generated $650,000 in grants, including $250,000 in
ARPA money, $450,000 in corporate gifts, $70,000 in political committee gifts, and
donations from friends, family, and colleagues.
innovative manner that was imagined and, hopefully, expanding
the facility to include more beds — because the existing beds are
almost constantly full and the need, sadly, remains.
“We had the ribbon cutting, and we were full the next day,”
Glynn said. “We could fill 15 beds today.”
The unit was designed to help achieve what is known in
healthcare as a ‘good death,’ one that, according to an Institute
of Medicine Report, is “free from avoidable distress and suffering
for patient, family, and caregivers, in general accord with the
patient’s ands family’s wishes, and reasonably consistent with
clinical, cultural, and ethical standards.”
“Andy really had
an affection for this
hospital; he could
have gone anywhere
for his care, but he
chose this place.”
By all accounts, Andy Yee’s passing met this criterion, and the
unit created in his name is dedicated to helping others achieve a
similar passing.
“This space was created in Andy’s spirit, and it’s designed to
focus on enhancing interaction and time between family and their loved one at
some of the most difficult times in people’s lives,” Loicona noted, adding that this is
the very essence of palliative care.
Coming Together
‘Collaboration’ comes from the Latin word ‘collaborare,’ meaning ‘to labor
together.’ It has come to describe individuals and groups working together to
achieve a common goal.
Since the Healthcare Heroes program was created in 2017, the Collaboration
category has been an important part of the initiative because almost all issues in
healthcare, from opioid addiction to food insecurity, are complex and require the
efforts of many different agencies pulling in the same direction.
The creation of the Andy Yee Palliative Care Unit is a somewhat different story,
but one that provides poignant lessons about the importance of collaboration and
how it enables things to happen that wouldn’t happen otherwise.
Our story begins ... well, it’s hard to say when it actually begins. It certainly began
before Andy Yee’s cancer brought him to Mercy’s ICU. And it probably began before
Food for Thought
The I-91 Supper Club covers several of those categories.
This is a group of friends, business colleagues, ‘political guys,’
and more who first gathered to mark the closing of the Hu Ke
Lau in Chicopee (one of the Yee family’s many restaurants) and
started meeting regularly after that, Ravosa said.
“We’d go to a restaurant once a month with a pre-set menu,
and we’d bounce around ... there were a lot of long-standing
friendships and legacy businesses involving families that had
been the community a long time,” he went on, noting that Sarah
Yee was invited to come to a meeting of the group and give a
presentation on the proposed unit.
And it was the group’s six-figure donation that essentially got
the ball rolling, said Stanton, who worked in tandem with Ravosa
on the project and recalls him being a “bull in a China closet.”
“Those checks started flying in,” he recalled. “Tony had a few events, and people
brought money to them, and then he was on a roll. In more than 20 years of doing
this, I can only think of one president of one university that I had to sprint to keep
up with, and the other one who was like that was Tony; he kept pushing us and
pushing us and pushing us.”
While funds were being raised, others were at work on design and operating
plans for the unit, which, as noted, is the first of its kind in the region.
Located on the hospital’s fifth floor, the unit provides an inviting, soothing
space for end-of-life care for patients and families, as well as patients with chronic
illnesses requiring pain and symptom management. The layout required certain key
elements, everything from a place where family members could sleep overnight to
spaces for physician-patient consultation.
As for the care provided there, Loicona added that the overriding mission is to
bring care at this level “back to family” and provide a support unit to the patient
and family members.
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