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2017 Health Care Champions Technician: Michael Gooch

CoxHealth

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Michael Gooch isn’t your typical paramedic. Yes, his job description still entails answering calls at patients’ homes, but his medical practice with CoxHealth now mostly revolves around primary care and helping patients make health care connections and decisions.

“I’m not just taking patients to the hospital, I’m helping them manage their care so they can spend their time doing more of the things they want to do,” he says.

Gooch took on his new role in January as one of the first five CoxHealth advanced practice paramedics – otherwise known as CHAPPs.

The goal of a CHAPP, Gooch says, is ensuring no patient slips through the cracks.

“We have patients who, for a variety of reasons, are being seen in the emergency department rather than their own primary care provider,” he says. “As the emergency department treats emergent illnesses now, they don’t have a treatment plan for the patient beyond a follow-up with your primary care, or ‘come back if it doesn’t get better.’”

Gooch sees patients in their homes or work, in the ER or at the doctor’s office. He helps patients get connected with doctors, pharmacies and even has assisted in finding housing. Part of his job also is educating on when and how to seek medical attention.

“Some of these patients don’t realize the help that is out there for them, or don’t understand how to get a ride to their doctor’s office, so they just skip it and manage at home until they’ve become sick enough an ambulance is needed,” he says.

Gooch says many of his patients have been let down by the health care system – dealing with not just physical illnesses, but mental and emotional hardships. Many of them, he says, have lost their free time, job and sometimes even their homes because of illness.

“I help give them the tools and the training to take charge of their health care,” Gooch says.

It’s all about bringing care to the patient.

“I think having a provider come to them, not wedge them into an appointment at some office 45 minutes away from their home, and talk to them – to genuinely see a provider care, listen and want to help them – there is no substituting that,” Gooch says. “This is my new role and it gets better with each passing day.”

Motivating Gooch professionally, are his own students. In addition to decades of teaching CPR, he also teaches advanced cardiovascular life support to registered nurses, physicians, paramedics, dentists and ER staff.

“Teaching is something I love,” Gooch says. “I’ve had students return to me years later, telling me how something I taught them was used to save a life, improve the quality of one or to keep one safe.”

Gooch says becoming a CHAPP is one of his proudest moments, but taking online and out-of-state classes to earn the necessary certifications didn’t come easy. He says it also taught him how to become a better teacher.

“I learned not just about critical care, but about the advancements of instruction and how to utilize these hybrid, online formats to help my own instruction,” he says.

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