Brand Partner Content
Good Heart Hospice is a Joint Commission-accredited hospice company in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. Its founders, Maya and Patrick Thona, believe that a good hospice program should lead with compassion. With Maya’s extensive experience in nursing and Patrick’s business expertise, the couple has sought to make a difference in the patients’ lives for which they care.
Finding Their Way into Hospice Care
Maya Thona needed a way to support her struggling family after the death of her father. Having moved here from the Philippines, her mother found it difficult to provide for them after losing the family’s breadwinner, and Maya knew she could help. Although Maya always wanted to become a doctor like her father, he had never wanted that life for her. Taking heed of his counsel, she decided on nursing school and never looked back.
When she completed her training and entered nursing, Maya never dreamed that she would specialize in hospice care at any point during her career. But in 2017, a friend of hers adamantly insisted that hospice work was a good fit for her, so she gave it a try. Though Maya found it difficult to watch people die, she was drawn to providing them the care they needed to ease their passing. She quickly discovered that while she enjoyed the work, the environment around hospice care was fraught with scams that took advantage of these most vulnerable patients.
As a result, she wanted to start a business that would make hospice care a better experience for those facing the end of their lives and the families who supported them. Tired and frustrated by the corruption of such a vital service, she partnered with the only person she could trust to put the needs of the patient first, her husband, Patrick. Combining their talents and expertise, they founded Good Heart Hospice.
Care-Motivated, Not Money-Motivated
Maya’s caring heart is the motivation behind the business and what makes it stand out amongst its competitors. Caring for the dying is not an easy task, even for an experienced nurse. It takes someone special to jump into it so wholeheartedly. Maya’s ability to work from a place of genuine compassion bathes the entire organization in its glow.
While Maya stays focused on the care side of running a hospice, Patrick follows a business and marketing plan whose cornerstone is providing excellent and heartfelt care. He believes in focusing on the delivery of services, the business can grow based on its industry reputation.
It’s a sentiment with which Maya wholeheartedly agrees. Her experience in hospice care before founding Good Heart Hospice was working for larger, profit-driven companies. She was disappointed to find that they scrimped on supplies and patient services to maintain higher profit margins. She wanted their organization to be more generous with providing care.
“I don’t want money to drive patient care,” Mrs. Thona said. “It’s not about the money. It’s about the care.”
The Proof is in the Reviews
Both Patrick and Maya are proud of what they have built and the care they provide. They regularly receive glowing reviews from patients and families, unlike the mediocre reviews they see given to profit-driven companies.
“It’s so difficult to maintain reviews like that,” Mr. Thona said. “You have some very high expectations, and it’s so hard to make everyone happy.”
Maya strongly believes their success in keeping clients happy is based on their honesty about the types of services they provide. She feels that hospice companies often make promises to patients and families that they can’t keep. Therefore, she is careful not to give patients and families false hope but instead to provide them with the very best of what the company can offer. She says,
“The only thing that we can guarantee you at the end of the day is that we will provide you with good care,” said Mrs. Thona.
Their earnestness shines through in the attention they offer their patients, and people are taking notice. They’ve become one of the leading hospice care providers in Southern California, with clients in the San Bernardino, Orange, Riverside, Ventura, and Los Angeles counties. In addition, they’ve recently achieved a big win for a small company when they were named as a preferred hospice provider by Loma Linda Medical University Medical Center.
But for the couple, prestige is only a vessel to help them reach more people who are in need of their services and provide them with the best possible care.
“We care about the people we work with,” said Mr. Thona “We want to provide quality service and be very helpful.”
About Good Heart Hospice
Good Heart Hospice care is dedicated to providing you with dignified care that promotes quality of life, comfort and convenience. We respect your personal healthcare and treatment decisions and strive to support you and your family. Good Heart Hospice & Palliative Care focuses on maximizing comfort, reducing suffering and allowing individuals to maintain their dignity.
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