Into the wild

Jonah Sachs, an entrepreneur and author of “Winning the Story Wars,” was keynote speaker at the recent 2015 Maine Governor’s Conference on Tourism and started with the story of himself at 16 being sent, reluctantly, to Greenville for a trek adventure.

“While I was pretty scared of spending a month in the wilderness with one pair of underwear and very little food, what I was most scared of was spending that time with kids I didn’t know,” Sachs said.

“I was shy, I was afraid of entering new social situations. By the end of day one, I found out that I was the only kid that was there by choice; all the other kids in my group had been sent there by the courts and none of them wanted to be there at all. So I was really scared at this point,” he said.

By the end of week one, someone stole all the desserts.

In week two, two campers bolted.

In week three, counselors started keeping their distance. He tracked one down to moan that the trip was awful, designed as torture.

“By the end of week four, I realized we weren’t going to get out of the woods unless somebody stepped up, and that somebody turned out to be me,” Sachs said.

So he did. The same counselor told him later that the trip was designed to find out if he could be a leader.

“And he was right,” Sachs said. “It was that experience of realizing when things really did get tough, I didn’t have to be that shy, retiring, small person that I thought I was. That’s what launched me into being able to feel like I could found my own business and take a new path in marketing.

“So I have a ‘Maine thing,’ and that is this discovery of my story when I was a teenager and so it’s kind of fitting and odd that I’m here, back again, to talk about storytelling 25 years later, but I’m excited to do it because it’s a special place to me.”

— Kathryn Skelton

Doctor, doctor

Until recently, patients searching for a doctor through St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center’s website would have gotten a ton of providers.

Some who were no longer working. Some who were no longer working at St. Mary’s. Some who had St. Mary’s privileges but mainly worked for a different hospital.  

Of the 13 cardiologists listed on St. Mary’s “find a provider” page, for example, half worked for a practice owned by Central Maine Medical Center. Of the five gastroenterologists listed on the page, it was impossible to tell whether any of them worked for St. Mary’s.

St. Mary’s spokesperson Jennifer Radel acknowledged the site was confusing for patients.

“Absolutely,” she said.

She said the hospital has been inconsistent in posting and removing doctors’ information, and it’s something St. Mary’s is working on.

“I think it was kind of fuzzy before,” she said. “Now we need to be able to say, ‘This is what it’s going to be.’ That’s the direction we’re moving in.”

The hospital is updating its “find a provider” page and evaluating the criteria for posting.

Some doctors have already been removed.

Those five gastroenterologists? Turns out two did belong to St. Mary’s.

— Lindsay Tice

Copy the Story Link