Physicians and nurses at Holy Name Medical Center in Teaneck, N.J., threw themselves into the relief effort following the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, with the support and encouragement of President and CEO Michael Maron.

When Maron, 52, and others at Holy Name heard that despite their best efforts, lives were being lost due to lack of basic equipment and supplies—such as oxygen—surgeons and anesthesiologists led an effort to garner $125,000 in contributions to purchase, at cost, an oxygen processor to be donated to Hopital Sacre Coeurin Milot, Haiti. “We would have patients who would die in front of our eyes because of a lack of that basic resource,” says Alan Gwertzman, head of anesthesia at Holy Name.

Maron, who is a finalist for Modern Healthcare's Community Leadership Award, then traveled to Haiti to ensure that the processor was running correctly and found that instead, it was sitting in pieces outside the building. So he and others from Holy Name dug a trench, laid pipe and assembled the generator from five parts that each weighed more than 1,000 pounds with the help of local Haitians clad in shorts and flip-flops.

“There were no forklifts; no large trucks,” he says.

When Maron told one Haitian, through a translator, to watch out or he might lose his foot if a heavy piece of equipment fell on it, the man responded, “Better that I lose my foot and do something productive, than keep it and sit on the side of the road.”

Maron reflects, “They are hard-working people. They are mired in corruption and the reality of living in poverty. Sadness and death and dying, and yet you find happiness and hope and joy, side by side.”

“Mike was instrumental in figuring out from a logistical standpoint how to do this, and how best to manage people,” Gwertzman says. “Heart, mind and soul he was really committed to this.”

In the time since, Hopital Sacre Coeur has been fiscally merged into Holy Name's foundation and is a partner in its operations. Maron and his executives have taken over hiring staff and coordinating all the functions, from running the day-to-day operations to raising money in the U.S., he says.

When people ask him why he directs so much effort to helping people in a foreign land rather than in the U.S., he replies: “If you want to care for the needy here better, go to the extremes of Haiti, and when you come back, you're a better caregiver because you've seen the ultimate extreme and you can put everything here in context.”

Gwertzman sees other motivations for Maron to willingly give up physicians' time and effort to travel on missions and care for the world's needy. “Mike used this as a team-building exercise,” he says. “By sending people down, while it wasn't the most cost-effective or (produced the most) return on dollars, he saw the big picture, the intangible, that bond that was created down there. I found it remarkable that he had that commitment.”