AHEC does provide some direct patient care ... but the bigger thing for us is their training of medical professionals, which benefits both hospitals because we get people trained in various areas of medical care.

It's sad because I worked there for six years. A lot of people were teary-eyed.

I saw something in their interactions, how much fun they have together. ... My hope was that if I had fun with it, other people would, and that if my grandparents could make me laugh, they could make other people laugh.

The Ministerial Alliance picked up that concept ... and brought it to the attention of both hospitals and physicians who were interested.

Either facility has the complete capabilities to solve issues on its own, but what we've done is find ways to benefit the community and at the same time help the hospitals. That allows us to work together ... in situations where hospitals sometimes find themselves competing.

Once the program got up and running, the slots available filled up very quickly. At one point we had slots filled for over a month. At that point, the conversation started on how do we expand.

If you don't get treatment early, the illness progresses to the point of emergency intervention. Then we end up with folks in the emergency room who could've been treated at a much lower level of intervention.