My name is Kendall Benjamin Harvey. I'm a middle school art teacher in Bermuda. When I got to the
hospital they said "your heart was operating at 15%. You need to get out of here." You know so,
after I got here, after being air ambulance'd out, I was in pretty bad shape. So, they—Dr. Russell
received me at Johns Hopkins and the care that he said he was going to do, you know, was true
to form like exactly what he said happened.
From that first phone call, we're there to assist with anything and everything that patients may need.
From organizing their medical appointments to travel accommodations to even delivering
prescriptions to their doorstep when they're here with us. We're there to
assist with anything they need before, during and after their visit with us.
They usually come to Hopkins, like, because they've been trying in their local
hospitals around the area and they couldn't find a solution. And, they come
in here like a lost hope. So, they're already confused, they're already depressed and
coming here and dealing with "where should I go?", "what can I do?", "how am I going to find the
doctor's office?" "is the doctor going to call me when my lab result is ready?" or "if I get these five tests today, am I
going to be able to get it?" At that point, your medical concierge or international
care coordinator is there for you
and just grabs the lab slip from you. "Why don't you have a little cup, you know, like a
little break and have your coffee?" I'm going to arrange everything for you.
What we do with the advantage of having
that one access is you tell what you need to that
one person and that one person is your advocate. They
understand what you need and they will know who to get your records to faster, so
that we can get to your appointment, which is the purpose of the call
anyway and little faster, if not a lot faster, than if you have to do things on
your own. We know the establishment, we know the physicians, we know who is best at dealing with
the care that you need and, therefore, we can cut out a lot of the guessing-game and get you
to the goal—which is get you an appointment, get you here, and get you started with the care that you need.
While patients have one point of contact, who is their care coordinator, to assist them with everything. That
care coordinator's part of a large team we have here
with the international department. So, it can make the patient's experience, in terms of
navigating the system, much easier. A care coordinator can connect the patient and
their family to a variety of different staff members that can assist with other
needs they may have. Juan Ramirez was my coordinator—excellent. He's been very, very good.
Calls me, makes sure that I'm on time. It's been—sometimes a pain in the neck. But, he's been excellent.
Very, very, very nice.
Stress and anxiety created by planning and
coordinating each step is something we don't want our patients to have to face.
We want to be able to take on that burden for them.
So, you know, the whole
experience has taught me to be thankful—people, you know, are very caring and loving.
You know, it's been a nice experience.
You know, we all want the same thing. We may not come from the same place, but
we all want the same and that is we want to be respected, we want to be cared for and we want
to know at the end of it all, everything's going to be okay.
So, it's personally enriching for me to be with people, to give of myself to others,
but then also have a lot more given back to me. I wouldn't trade this for anything.