Inspiring Good

Paul Shetler Fast on Transforming Community Health

• Community Foundation of Elkhart County

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Serving the Underserved: A Conversation with Paul Shetler Fast

In this episode of the Inspiring Good Podcast, hosts Marshall King and Kevin Deary talk with Paul Shetler Fast, the executive director of Maple City Health Care Center in Goshen, Indiana. Paul discusses the comprehensive care services provided by the center, which include primary care, pediatrics, mental health, and dental programs. The conversation delves into the financial challenges of healthcare, the importance of accessible and affordable services, and the innovative solutions Maple City employs to meet community needs. Paul also shares personal anecdotes from his international background, his professional journey, and his vision for the future of healthcare in the community. The episode highlights how Maple City and its partners work collaboratively to improve public health and address barriers to care.

00:00 Introduction to the Inspiring Good Podcast
00:32 Meet Paul Shetler Fast: A Journey from Africa to Goshen
00:56 Maple City Healthcare Center: Mission and Services
03:34 Affordable Medications and Community Impact
05:38 Expansion and Growth of Maple City Health
06:50 Paul's Early Life and Inspiration for Healthcare
09:37 Career Path: From Goshen College to the VA
12:27 Community Diversity and Language Services
14:44 Navigating the U.S. Healthcare System
22:42 Collaborations and Community Partnerships
31:48 Closing Thoughts and What Gives Hope

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This show is a production of the Community Foundation of Elkhart County. It is powered by equipment from Sweetwater and recorded in The Riverbend building in Elkhart's River District. Editing is done by the award-winning communication students at Goshen College, home of one of the best college radio stations in the nation. Listen to Globe Radio at 91.1 FM. Learn more about the Community Foundation of Elkhart County at inspiringgood.org You can follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Music is provided by Sensational Sounds. Thanks for listening. We hope you are inspired and inspire good and your community.

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Marshall King: Welcome to the Inspiring Good Podcast. This podcast is brought to you by the Community Foundation of Elkhart County, which serves a vibrant community in northern Indiana, known for its generosity and strong network of nonprofit organizations. I am Marshall King, your co-host with Kevin Deary , a veteran nonprofit, CEO, who now coaches others.

Our guest this morning is Paul Shetler Fast, the executive director of Maple City Healthcare Center. He was born in Africa and found his way to Goshen before going on to work nationally and internationally. He returned to Goshen with his wife, Rebecca Shetler Fast and their children, and is contributing to our community in rich ways.

Paul, good to have you here. Welcome. Thank you, Marshall. It's great to be here. All we are excited to have you here. 

Kevin Deary: Tell us a little bit about Maple City Health and exactly what the mission [00:01:00] is. Yeah, 

Paul Shetler Fast: so Maple City Healthcare Center is one of our region's best ke kept secrets. We've been around for 35 years but many in our community haven't heard of it or haven't experienced it directly.

Maple City, . Healthcare Center, our vision is working for a healthy community where everyone is cared for because unfortunately we know that's often not the case. That there's we all face health challenges in our life. All different kinds. And many in our community don't have places where they do feel cared for or are able to get the healthcare they need.

So we try to provide a really . Quality, comprehensive healthcare that's actually accessible. It's affordable. People can get what they need. And so that starts with primary care, but it includes pediatrics. We do autism evaluations. We have mental health and addictions. We do pregnancy care. We do our own deliveries with in partnership with Goshen Health.

We have nutrition, we have medications, we do in-house labs. We have dental programs. So it's a pretty comprehensive set of resources that we try to provide at costs that are [00:02:00] affordable to folks, meet them where they're at take any insurance and then do this in a way that meets the highest quality standards.

So we're consistently ranked as one of the top quality health centers in the country. We, again have the highest . We got the highest ranking from the federal the Federal Government's program for health centers which puts us in the top three clinics in Indiana. So it's extraordinarily high quality care.

It's where . My family goes for care. My kids get care. And then trying to make that also affordable, accessible to everyone. 

Kevin Deary: I love the fact that's where you and your family get care as well. This because this provides a real service in our community by relieving the emergency room as the primary care provider.

Which that should not be the case. 

Paul Shetler Fast: Absolutely. So we serve about 10,000 patients a year. And what we know is that the research shows that when you provide quality comprehensive care like we're doing every patient that comes to us on average and stays with us, that's gonna save the healthcare system [00:03:00] generally our.

Community around $1,700 per year per patient. And that's really concentrated in in avoiding those emergency room visits, urgent care, unnecessary specialty appointments keeping things from, like diabetes, hypertension, keeping those under control so they're not escalating because . An hour in the emergency room is gonna cost more than two years of primary care.

And so getting that preventive care to folks and managing their conditions early, it's better for the person. It's better for that individual. It's better for our hospitals, it's better for our community. 

Kevin Deary: Got me thinking about, you said diabetes and high blood pressure and the cost of drugs and if you can't find, or how do they afford, do you have any connections through pharmaceutical to make it easy for people to, to handle their diabetes and blood pressure and heart conditions.

Paul Shetler Fast: So this is one of, the amazing programs that we have access to at Maple City Healthcare Center. We're part of a program called three 40 B, which is allows [00:04:00] us to essentially buy medications at cost from the pharmaceutical companies, and we pass that along at cost. We don't make a dollar on our medications program.

We pass that along at cost to our patients. So if you're a patient and this can be everything from insulin to, if you've got, a kid who has allergic reaction, you need an EpiPen. If you go to the . The pharmacy and you need that med that can cost hundreds of dollars, and yet the actual cost of producing it is maybe five or $10 for the pharmaceutical companies.

And so because we're able to buy it at cost, almost all generic meds, normal meds insulins hypertension meds, et cetera, those we can pass along at. Generally five or $10 to the patient, which is that often makes the difference between someone being able to, keep their diabetes under control, keep their hypertension under control even take, if they need meds for depression or anxiety or whatever their condition is.

That is a key part of accessibility that is often missing in our healthcare system Now. As a CEO [00:05:00] at the Boys and Girls Clubs, and Goshen was our kind of epicenter. I know that I worked very closely with Dr. Gingrich in the early days on the North side, and that Maple City Health was no secret to all of us.

Kevin Deary: We knew that it provided a very key part of healthy families and healthy communities and healthy neighborhoods. . And always very grateful for being our children and our families. . We're often shared and we knew that we could take good care of the families, particularly the children and the elderly in those families.

So to me I have always had a big heart for Maple City Health. But you still have just the one location, or have you. Grown. 

Paul Shetler Fast: So that first location which opened in 1989, across from Chamberlain School there on the north side of Goshen that's where we started. And it was an old fire station and it grew slowly.

And then in 20 15, 20 16, we added our Vista clinic. So that's just up the road. It's the old mansion on the hill as you're headed up toward Bristol. And that became our second clinic in . [00:06:00] During COVID, we added a dental clinic at that same Vista site. And then last year we added we added Pedallers site out at Pedallers Village, which we call West End.

So we now have three integrated primary care clinics. All of those have that full range of services from OB to pediatrics, primary care, mental health, et cetera, and then the dental clinic. So that's how we've been able to add so many more patients. We had been . Stuck even with the two clinics only being able to have five or 6,000 patients a year.

And then now last year we took care of almost 10,000. This year we're on track. We're gonna be more like 12,000 by the end of this year. And I 

Kevin Deary: remember when 3000 was the absolute limit. Yep. And then it suddenly grew. And obviously you, the arrival of you to back to Goshen, because originally you had gone to Goshen College, I believe.

And were a Goshen resident, but you were born in Tanzania. Yeah, so tell me about that. So my parents were working for Mennonite Central Committee which some folks around here [00:07:00] might know from the relief sale that happens and the great food there that raises money for their mission. So they were working in East Africa.

Paul Shetler Fast: My brother was actually born in Ethiopia, and then I was born in Tanzania while they were working there doing community development work, humanitarian work. And so that . Gave me a really unique perspective growing up in another culture where the folks around me were not like me in many ways.

And so how do you connect across cultures and languages and understand the just vast differences that we experience in how we grow up in the cultures we're raised in our economic situation. And yet fundamentally how . Similar as humans, we all are and, struggle with issues of health and how are we gonna take care of our family and what are our dreams for our kids?

And there's this shared humanity. Even while there is a lot of difference 

Kevin Deary: I love the shared humanity comment. I've probably been in 22 different countries. . Africa, middle East, Europe, Mexico Caribbean. And until you travel some [00:08:00] of these second and third world nations and see the things that we take for granted, particularly in healthcare.

So what was the tipping point for you, Paul, when you said health is what I'm gonna do, and not just health, but health for those that need it the most? 

Paul Shetler Fast: Yeah. So one of my . Some of my earliest memories, we were growing up in Tanzania and this was at a time when the HIV epidemic was spreading completely unchecked across Africa.

And it wasn't something people talked about. The disease wasn't well understood and there was no treatment that was effective. And so people were dying. Lots of people were dying. I went to way too many funerals of family, friends of . Parents of my friends. And you saw just this devastation in the community.

You saw issues of stigma and blame. You saw problems of people not even being able to access sort of basic dignity at when they're going through something like that. And so this sort of conviction that, health is really [00:09:00] important and it can be taken away from us quicker than we can imagine.

And . That we need the community to come together to care about that. Some of my other memories from that time are riding on the back of a motorcycle that was doing these vaccine clinics in places that otherwise didn't have access. So I got to tag along with the community health worker and, basic vaccines there.

So that was a, an another experience of getting into the communities that need it most. And then how do we, what is our role in, in helping people . Access care that they need that they feel comfortable with, and that helps 'em avoid problems down the road. 

Okay, Paul you went to Goshen College and then you I believe moved to Pittsburgh, right?

Yep. Yep. And then got a graduate degree and took a job with the Veterans Administration. That is correct. So walk us through this path of how you ended up in this seat At the, at Maple City Healthcare Center. And are you still on the County Health Board as well? 

Paul Shetler Fast: Yes, I'm 

the chair of the 

Paul Shetler Fast: County Board of Health.

Yep. To, I don't [00:10:00] think . You would give my life story as like a roadmap for someone trying to end up in this role. . It's a, there's a lot of twists and turns. A lot of . Saying yes to needs that were put in front of me, opportunities that were put in front of me. I had a early mentor who advised me not to think I was so smart as to be able to play in the future and instead do well at the task in front of you and.

Be open to what doors God opens for you. So yeah, when my wife and I were married just out of Goshen College, we moved to Pittsburgh so that I could go to graduate school. And that was to study international development and non-profit management. My wife and I, we were, I. We were newlyweds, we were, and so we were playing tag team.

She worked as a social worker while I went to school, and then I went, I start, got a job while she went to school for her Master's of Social work. And so we needed to be in Pittsburgh and there was a fabulous opportunity to jump into the Department of Veterans Affairs in their healthcare side. So I was as a programmer, you could be fast tracked into mid-management.

So straight out [00:11:00] of school I was brought into . Really interesting regional programs with the Department of Veterans Affairs and then got my first supervisory job at the Butler va. And that was just transformational for me. Seeing healthcare from the front lines, getting to understand that kind of a system.

Also as a new supervisor, I was supervising physicians and other specialists who were . I'd been doing this work for longer than I'd been alive. And so what's my role in understanding? How do you supervise with humility? And yet add value to, to the mission there. From Pittsburgh, we were, my wife and I were both successful in our careers.

Things were moving well and yet we found ourselves called to do more. And we were asked to consider a position in Haiti. And so we, we were reflecting on that, preying on that. And during that time, I decided to go back for a master's of public health. I knew that I loved healthcare.

I, I loved community health working to, to help the whole community not just deliver healthcare services. So how do [00:12:00] not just focused on how to see more patients or how to improve this outcome, but really to help the health of the community. And went back to that got my Master's of public health before going on to Haiti.

Marshall King: So funny how things come full circle. The Peddler's Village site is a former VA medical office, Uhhuh , that there's a beautiful story about how it became your third site and this site, . Serves a number of Haitian immigrants in this community. 

Your clinics serve a wide range of nationalities.

The language is spoken in your offices. The number is remarkable. How do you serve the entire community and probably see the entire community in some ways that most people don't. Tell us what 

Paul Shetler Fast: yeah, we live in an incredible community and also a really diverse community.

People coming from all kinds of backgrounds all different economic levels languages. So in Indiana we, our clinic serves more people who receive care in a language other than English than any other. Spanish is clearly a big part of that, knowing our community [00:13:00] Haitian Creole is. Now number two, after Spanish.

And when I went to Goshen College here and when we moved back from Haiti we moved here to be closer to family. . I had, I thought I was never gonna use Haitian Creole again. There hadn't been a community here. But that's grown rapidly in the last several years. And so being able to use that, being able to interpret for patients who need that care, that's been wonderful.

We have tons of Ukrainian and Russian speakers many who have fled that conflict. And then . All kinds of others. Arabic and Cambodian and Vietnamese. And it's a really rich community we live in. And then we have folks who have come from all over the US who, some who have grown up in Elkhart.

We have patients who drive. We just pulled a map the other week of where are patients coming from. We have patients who are driving from Terre Haute. We have patients who are driving from near Chicago, from southern Michigan. They're passing a lot of clinics on the way to come to Maple City. So what is it about us that we try to be that place where they can feel welcome, they can feel comfortable, healthcare needs [00:14:00] trust.

We lost a lot of trust in healthcare in our community over the last several years during the Covid Pandemic. People want to have a place where they feel understood, they feel respected, they feel cared for. And people will go a long way to find that. And so we see that at Maple City. 

Kevin Deary: There are a lot of conversations right now at the national level with who's going to step in.

I think Senator Kennedy is online to become the . The czar of the health world. How does that, what's the correlation to that as far as the federal government and what the direction they can and the impact on local health communities? And I'm not specifically targeting Yeah. Mr. Kennedy. I was talking about just anybody in the, in that position.

Paul Shetler Fast: I. Yeah, so our health systems in the United States are really complicated. And they're really, they're very intertwined. And so what happens at the federal level with programs like Medicaid which provides health insurance to about one in five Americans lots of kids, [00:15:00] folks with disabilities and folks on lower incomes, of course, we've got Medicare, which provides coverage to a lot of people.

Federal grants that allow us to try new things. Part of our ability to for example add developmental screenings. We were finding that a lot of our kids who would get screened for a developmental problem, we had nowhere to send them for evaluation. And so they weren't able to get treatment.

So even though we have great partners like Logan Center, for example in the area, they weren't able to access those services 'cause they didn't have a diagnosis. And so we were able to bring that in-house. Part of that was supported by a federal grant. So there's a lot of there's a lot of interconnections there.

The bigger issue we have in our country right now is this, which direction is healthcare gonna go? It's healthcare is broken in the United States. It's expensive. We spend more than any other country in the world. And. It's and we're not always getting the best outcomes. We have a lot of health problems in our country.

People are suffering. And . How are we gonna find solutions that are affordable, that are accessible where people feel comfortable to get preventive care? [00:16:00] If your leg is broken, you're gonna go to the emergency room. But are you gonna go in before you're sick, before it's a crisis to make sure that diabetes is managed well, that hypertension is managed well, that you're getting treatment for that depression before your life is in crisis that you're getting your kids screened for issues.

Before they need that specialist care so we can address it early. Those kind of solutions, they're better for the individuals, they're better for our community, they're better for our country. But they require a different direction in healthcare than the inertia of more specialists more expensive treatments.

This, healthcare industry is really driven towards those kind of expenses and primary care, the kind of work we do at Maple City that tends to be underfunded. We we operate on a shoestring budget. Everyone shares offices. We pay less than than our competitors for particularly like our physicians.

For example, our leadership positions. People do it for mission, but the reason that has to exist is 'cause there's not . The same sort of money in primary [00:17:00] care and preventive care as there is in specialty care. In the United States. 

Kevin Deary: You mentioned your staff. How many staff do you have? What's the breakout of doctors, nurses, physicians assistants nurse practitioners, paraprofessional, social workers, mental health?

You are really across the board. We have a phenomenal staff and just from. Diverse in all kinds of different ways, including professionally. So we have 155 staff. We have four physicians at the moment. We have 22 advanced practice providers. That'd be nurse practitioners and physician assistants.

Paul Shetler Fast: We have 13 social workers. We have two nutritionists. We have a dentist, we have three hygienists. We have nurses and medical assistants. We have a team that's really there to wrap around the patient. And these are people again who are, they're top of their game. They're also in general, they're taking a cut to come to us.

We just had another physician just yesterday who agreed to join our team later this year. She's taking a significant [00:18:00] cut from where she has been working in the community, but she wants to be there because it's a place where she can . She can live out her, why she can be there for the patient in the way that the patient needs without having to deal with all the other issues in healthcare and to be able to really focus on the patient with this kind of a supportive team around her.

Kevin Deary: So this is your first chance to be an executive director? It is when you become an executive director, CEO. It also comes with the board of directors, Uhhuh . So what lessons have you learned? Being, working with and for a board. 

Paul Shetler Fast: Yeah. We have a great board at Maple City. We have a unique board because we're, we really wanna represent on the board, the community we serve.

And so that those voices of the patient, we never want to get, far from, what does this feel like from the patient's perspective? What does our community need? Where are those gaps in, in what we're providing the community? Most of our board members are patients themselves and they represent, a wide variety of educational [00:19:00] backgrounds of different income levels.

They've experienced, . Individually, like what is it like to be uninsured and trying to access healthcare? What's it like to be on Medicaid? So some of these difficulties that our patients face, we like to be able to have that on our board. And that's been really rewarding.

They're a great board to work with. There, it is, it's. You have a lot more bosses, as an executive director. 'cause that whole board you're responsible to. And they each bring their own perspective, their passion what they're interested in. So it's been a learning. 

So Paul we referenced that you're the head of the county health board.

Leading that group is very different than dealing with the board of your organization. And as its executive director, it's the County health Board is looking at the bigger picture and political. So how do you navigate that? What's your goal there? The tasks of that board and how do you try to help improve the health in our community?

Paul Shetler Fast: I. Yeah, so it, it's interesting 'cause both organizations in some ways we share a lot of the same mission [00:20:00] and vision. We want a healthy community. Maple City, we've got our way of addressing that with the kinds of services we offer to, those patients and their families. The health department and in Indiana in particular, public health is

Is local. Yes, there's a state Board of Health, but all the action really the responsibility for public health is at the local level. And so I was asked to come in as we were coming out of Covid and it had been really rough in our community and a lot of people had lost trust. There was, what you need in public health is a shared commitment to a vision of a healthy community. And theoretically, scientifically, there's a lot of stuff we could do to improve the health of our community. But what the public health department should be working on are those things that yes, can advance the health of the community, but they're the things we as a community are agreeing to do together.

And . Yeah it's we are responsible to the elected officials. They're the ones who appropriate the budgets. They're the ones who are in touch with the voters directly. And we need to be respectful [00:21:00] and responsive to them and really together try to figure out what are the things we should be working on.

And so helping guide them work with those team, with the team at the health department, the Board of Health, and then our elected officials to come up with . With what are those priorities that we as a community agree on and those. Those are great things. We're trying to reduce maternal and infant mortality.

We have frankly, terrible rates in our county that no one's satisfied with. We should not be satisfied. That more moms and babies are dying in Elkhart County than in many of our neighboring counties. We're working on things like sexually transmitted infections, which no one wants to talk about.

And no one wants to do that work. No one wants to work on, think about tuberculosis infections. But they're important. We need to preserve our community's health. We need to keep these kind of issues in check by making sure people get tested and treated effectively. And so the health department really fills this gap.

They make sure that we're watching all the issues. If there's things that, Oaklawn is the right organization [00:22:00] to take care of, more power to 'em, let's support Oaklawn in doing that. If the hospitals are willing to take on certain parts. Excellent. Let them do it. Maple City, heart City, we've got a lot of great community partners and the health department is doing more and more granting to community partners rather than trying to do all the work themselves.

And that's been really productive. But what are the things, what are the gaps that are missing? So as we're looking at these priorities, maternal and child health. Chronic care mental health and addiction, suicide prevention sexually transmitted infections. These are some of the things that the Health department along with our elected officials, the Board of Health, have all agreed together.

These are things we can do. And these are things that the community agrees or priorities and we want to see a healthier 

Kevin Deary: community. 

I just want to draw the correlation as I was listening to you talk about the challenges and opportunities that are out there. I'm sure you've heard of the organization caps.

Because indeed , you guys are so aligned in your vision. Of course, your wife being Rebecca Shefas in charge of caps Yeah. Executive, CEO there. [00:23:00] But it's amazing how you are all linked together and it's all, a lot of social service agencies absolutely should be linked together. And sharing resources, sharing information.

I think that's because that is integrated health right there. 

Paul Shetler Fast: And that's been one of my biggest priorities when I came. We are not a little clinic on the hill separate from the rest of the community. We are part of the community, so I. The moment we had spaces opened up for patients the first places we reached out to were those community partners that serve some of those vulnerable people in the community.

Boys and Girls Club is on that list. Bacher caps, Oak Lawn, the Clubhouses Jail Ministries, rta, all these organizations that serve vulnerable folks in our community to make sure that we're interconnected, that we can . Get the individual, the family, the care they need when they need it, and being open to what do they need?

So one of the things caps came to us, to us with in the last year was saying, Hey, these sexual assault nurse examine [00:24:00] exams. So when a child, for example, in our county has experienced this awful thing, they have experienced a sexual assault, there's a lot of things we need to do for that kid.

A lot of things we need to do for that family. And one of them is this exam, a medical exam. And right now in Elkhart County, we don't have that available for kids. We have to send them to St. Joe or to Fort Wayne. And is this something you could do? Absolutely. It's something we can do. So it's gonna take some work.

We're working on getting people trained with Community Foundation help. Community foundation's help. Foundation's help. We're working to get folks trained so that this year we can add sexual assault nurse examiner services here in Elkhart County for kids so that we don't have to be asking families on what's already the worst week of their lives, that they need to go across county lines to do this.

And we can do it in a way where we're doing it as integrated care. We can provide. . Mental health supports, not only for that kid, but for their whole family. Is there other medical needs that have come out of this, how can we help this family? By just wrapping our [00:25:00] arms around to them, instead of having this fragmented service system.

Kevin Deary: Since we're both called coaching college alum, we've had conversations about providing services for all the students. . Particularly international students who don't, may not have obviously access to a doctor and being able to find . Healthcare, mental healthcare, even things prescriptions for sore throats.

. Things that that may hit our students. Is there a continued conversation around that? 

Paul Shetler Fast: Absolutely. Goshen College is, I. One of our other key partners. We get a lot of students from them in our nursing program, our social work program. Some of our some of our physicians eventually are Goshen College grads that come back around, our nurse practitioners.

And yeah, how do we serve that community as well? They're a part of our community. So we are, we have a referral pathway opened up where they can send they can send students and their families to us. That would be, those . Kind of relationships are really important because sometimes we forget all the people who struggl to access care [00:26:00] in our community.

Another demographic that people often forget is, pastors of small churches. They're often too small to be able to afford health insurance plans. So those folks are often on Medicaid or maybe trying to struggle with, marketplace plans, which can really leave you out in the cold.

And that's a demographic we serve that people wouldn't think about. There are just so many people in our community. Who face these barriers to healthcare whether it's mental health or addictions, it's finding a place where you can deliver your baby and feel comfortable and get, all your care for your family in one place.

That Maple City really does serve the whole community well, we hope you don't get called away. Somewhere else because we highly value what you bring your leadership skills, all with humility and with great respect. So we hope that you're never called away. We hope you stay here and retire.

Kevin Deary: But if you do retire here, , help me understand what would your vision be for the next 10 years for Maple City? Maple City? 

Paul Shetler Fast: Maple City's next 10 years are gonna be one [00:27:00] of growth and partnership, the needs in our community. Every time we add a service, every time we open up new capacities to the community, it only opens up it, it reveals more need in the community.

I mentioned that we added these autism evaluations, being able to do that in-house when we started . We knew that our kids were waiting about two years between screening positive on a developmental screening and actually getting services which completely eliminates the it undermines the value in early intervention if you're waiting two years in a small kid's life.

We thought, oh, if we get a part-time person who does this a couple hours a month, it's gonna meet the need for our patients. She's now doing about a day a week. We added another provider who's doing it. They filled up and now we're, we just sent one through our program, through Riley's Children's Hospital to get trained so we can add a third provider doing these.

When you add the services, it's amazing to see what is needed in our community. And the same's true on partnership. We're working really [00:28:00] closely with Oaklawn, with many of these other partners with Beacon, with Goshen Hospital so that we can see . How together we can do better because it's really hard to access healthcare in this country and it's really hard to navigate all these fragmented systems.

So what can we do to make our health records talk to each other? What can we do to make it seamless for the patient to when we can take care of 'em? And then when do they need to go to Oaklawn? And then how can we get, bring them back in ways that are just smooth for that patient? So it's gonna be one of

Trying to do more and trying to do more together with these community partners. 

Kevin Deary: So I'm a little bit older. I was born in Boston, as didn't ever have health insurance. I are two things that stick in my mind that shaped my future and why I eventually served on a local hospital board of directors, and eventually as president were two things that shaped my life at a very young, not having healthcare.

The first one was when I was six years old and living in Boston and . I remember I was punched by an adult and I ended up with a fractured jaw, and [00:29:00] I remember being sent to Mass General Hospital and they, and at that time in the sixties African American and Irish did not . They were serviced at Boston City Hospital.

. It was a different day. . And I remember they put us, 'cause we didn't have a vehicle, we went, got there by cab, but I remember being sent by CAB to Boston City Hospital where I sat in the, holding a towel to my mouth. I couldn't close my mouth. I was in a lot of pain and eventually got good care and, moved on.

Second one was when I fractured my ankle at 10. . Playing, jumping off curbs or whatever I was doing. And I remember going to a street clinic. What we called street clinics. . Back in the sixties. . And I remember a, I'm not sure he was a doctor. I think if you ever wanted to, we third and fourth year medical seniors who fail, where do they go?

They used to go to street clinics 'cause they was good enough. . And we've come so far from that. I just remember having this gentleman wrap my put a cast on me that wasn't straight. . And with a cigarette in his mouth. And I . I assumed he was a doctor and I [00:30:00] remember that because it was a long time ago, but our country has come so far.

And are the people like you who have a vision to create real health advantages? I. For people who don't have insurance and don't have anybody to provide that, and I'm just so grateful from that standpoint for what you bring at Maple City Health. From that, I wanted to add that, those stories, because you never know what people's paths have been.

. Or what their potential could be, and so I just wanted to personally thank you for the great work of Maple City Health. Thank you, Kevin and . When you've experienced it, when you've experienced what it's like to be on the other side of these health divides you never forget it. My wife and I delivered our first baby in Haiti.

Paul Shetler Fast: The person who was supposed to help deliver, who spoke English was not available, so we did it in another language. Once you've been on the other side of that you'll never look at it the same. And unfortunately, way too often we're satisfied with these two [00:31:00] tiers of healthcare. And.

And we at Maple City, part of our vision is this is healthcare. This is of equality. That if you have all the options in the world, you'd still come and get care with us. Some of our biggest donors are patients of ours. Our staff who have health insurance, they could go anywhere. Over 90% of 'em choose to come with their families to our clinics, just like I do with my family.

. Because that's the level of quality we should be shooting for. Not that it's good enough and everyone should be grateful. No, these are human beings who deserve care, who deserve dignity who deserve healing. And so the only way we can do that is if we're doing it in a way that's at that, that highest level.

Paul I'm our community is a better place because you and your wife and your family are here. So thank you for the work you do. 

We always close the podcast with a simple question, what gives you hope? 

Paul Shetler Fast: So what's giving me hope? What often gives me hope, and maybe Kevin can relate to this as former Boys and Girls Club, [00:32:00] when you hang out with children, when you see the spark they have for life, when you

When you see the joy they can get and the difference you can make in their lives. So we have two young kids and they keep me humble. They keep me , they keep me waking up at four or five in the morning with their excitement for, whatever we're gonna do that day. And being able to see the change we can make in the lives of the children we serve the children personally in our family, my kids that.

That hope, that spark the life my kids are really into Lord of the Rings. And one of the, one of the quotes from there is where there's life, there's hope. And when you and I would say that's part of what draws me to healthcare because when we can. When we can serve life, when we can help people live and thrive there's always hope and we can be there for folks when they need it most.