Grants and Generosity Propel Healthcare Forward
Maple City Health Care Center’s growth spurt is being aided by a connection between a landlord, a mayor, and a new executive director.
In January 2022, Todd Lederman learned from the television news that the Veterans Administration would be leaving the space he rented to the federal agency. The VA had been there seven years and was promising a 10-year contract when he learned of the surprising change of events.
He purchased the medical equipment and was shopping the building to local healthcare agencies, including Maple City Health Care Center, which was going through a leadership transition.
After months of struggling to find a tenant, he told Jeremy Stutsman, then mayor of Goshen, who shortly thereafter met with Paul Shetler Fast, the new executive director of the community health care center.
Soon, Lederman and Shetler Fast were talking. “We just had marvelous conversations with Paul,” Lederman says.
Shetler Fast had worked for the VA after graduate school and before he came back to Goshen with his family. He was hired as the new leader of the community health organization, which he saw as needing more space. “We knew we were busting at the seams and we hadn’t taken new patients for two or three years during COVID,” he says. “And so we knew that for our mission we needed to be opening up for patients, which means we needed a new space so we were starting the process of looking around for new space.”
Historically, Maple City Health Care Center had been a neighborhood clinic. It started in 1989 in an unused Goshen fire station. The center and founder James Nelson Gingerich got national attention for how it offered high-quality medical care on an affordable sliding scale and harnessed Medicaid and Medicare payments to support growth. In 2015, it added Vista Community Health Care Center and in 2021, opened a dental clinic.
Paul Shetler Fast (right) talks with an employee in the new Westend Community Health Center.
The new Westend Community Health Center is in a building constructed in the 1990s and purchased by Todd and Cindy Lederman in 2006. It is near U.S. 33, closer to Elkhart, and a bus stop is nearby. It’s adjacent to Brookside Manor, where a growing number of Haitian immigrants are living as they seek asylum. “It was just a miracle for both sides,” says Lederman. “It was just what they needed. It was a location advantageous to them. It was God-ordained, I believe. We are grateful to partner with them basically in the work of the kingdom.”
The organization needed $2 million to make the leap. Some of that money covered the lag in Medicaid reimbursements and the addition of staff, as well as other expenses. The Community Foundation gave $150,000 to add maternal and child health staff and another $500,000 grant for the new location. “The grants from the Community Foundation helped unlock other funds to be able to get to that $2 million and make this possible,” says Shetler Fast.
The organization’s leaders made the decision in May 2023 to proceed and things moved quickly. In order to qualify for additional Medicaid funding for 2023’s work, MCHCC needed to demonstrate more than 6 months of service at the site in the calendar year. So in late June 2023, Shetler Fast became patient number one in the facility, where lights were still being installed and paint was going on walls. Dr. Margaret Loewen ran labs and prescribed medication. Other staff members, nearly all of whom are patients at the clinic, also saw a doctor.
Maple City Health Care Center had 6,000 patients for a number of years and couldn’t accept more. Yet the demand for services was high, in part because they don’t turn anyone away for inability to pay, medications are offered at cost to patients, and labs and mental health needs are offered onsite.
Employees at the Westend Community Health Center offer a spectrum of health services in a range of languages.
The organization that had stayed small isn’t any longer. Staff has grown from 100 to more than 150 with the addition of the new location. The number of patients may reach 10,000 this year. Eleven staff members offer mental health services in multiple languages. About half of Maple City’s patients speak Spanish and Haitian Creole is the second most common language. Patients who speak Spanish, Haitian Creole, Ukrainian, Russian, Arabic, and a range of other languages can speak their language to a staff member or translator, as 92 percent of the staff are bilingual.
In immigrant communities, mental health care often carries a stigma. Maple City can offer it as part of a wide array of integrated services without others becoming aware.
Prenatal care is offered, along with delivery at Goshen Hospital, as well as pregnancy and parenting groups. Pediatric professionals can do screenings for autism. Nutrition professionals are on staff. The dental clinic helps those in need. Tattoo removal is offered at Vista in partnership with the Elkhart County Jail Ministry. The suite of services is broader than nearly anywhere in the community, says Shetler Fast.
Prenatal care is a key service offered by Westend Community Health Center.
Patients are coming from Elkhart and across the county. “We have the highest uninsured rate in the state,” says Shetler Fast. “So more than a third of our patients are completely uninsured. We have the highest percentage of people who speak a language other than English in the state, and we have the highest percentage who identify as Hispanic in the state. Those are all somewhat connected, but not entirely overlapping.”
The clinic is partnering with other clinics and local health systems. “I definitely see us filling in the gaps of what healthcare is needed,” says Rocio Diaz, community outreach coordinator.
The clinic’s work is recognized for its quality, with it recently earning the distinction of being in the top 10 percent in the nation among clinics of its type.
With the addition of the Westend Community Health Clinic, MCHCC is able to help even more kids and families in Elkhart County. “Because if we can address mental health issues for a kid or we can address obesity or diabetes or hypertension in a kid, you’ve really altered the course of their life in a really profound way,” says Shetler Fast.
This story appeared in the 2024 Annual Report.
