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Melanie Padgett, 64, has lived on Maui for over four decades and has become a vital voice for patients and families navigating the health care system.
Her understanding of the system began 10 years ago when her husband’s health began to decline due to chronic liver disease. He was going to need a transplant.
The Pukalani couple married in 1976. In 1980 James Padgett was seriously injured in a collision with a drunken driver on Old Haleakala Highway. It was only in 2003 the Padgetts learned the blood transfusions that saved his life also gave him hepatitis C, which causes gradual liver damage.
James, now 68, was admitted to the hospital for emergency situations multiple times in the six months before they went to the mainland for his liver transplant in 2009. Through it all the Padgetts experienced every angle of the health-care system in Kaiser Permanente facilities from Maui and Oahu to the mainland.
The challenges they faced and the support they received from their providers inspired Melanie, who is now in her sixth year volunteering as a patient voice on Kaiser Permanente’s Member Advisory Council.
“By 2014 my husband’s health had improved enough that I could start to think about giving back in gratitude for the lifesaving care he received,” says Padgett. “What better way could there be to do that than to be a voice for members in making positive change within the system?”
Padgett shares that her voice on the council helped bring attention to the gaps in communication and care between the Maui and mainland physicians involved in her husband’s post-transplant monitoring. Examples included needed lab tests that were not ordered and results not shared during a time of staff transition.
Their concerns brought immediate action, Melanie says, with her husband reassigned to a Kaiser gastroenterologist on Oahu who managed his case until a permanent specialist was hired at the Wailuku Clinic.
“The Kaiser transplant coordinator who helped facilitate the change in assignment to the Oahu doctor thanked me for speaking up because not only had I helped my husband, but also the other liver transplant recipients who were experiencing similar gaps in care,” she says.
Padgett and other advisory council members have provided suggestions to make Kaiser’s website more user-friendly and efficient, improve the wording of signs and brochures to be as clear as possible for patients, and reduce wait times for appointments and getting prescriptions filled.
One of the members has been instrumental in establishing a support system for Kaiser breast cancer patients on Maui, she says. Another is highlighting the need to establish a better rehabilitation protocol for patients recovering from heart attacks and heart surgery. Padgett hopes other patients are encouraged to join the council where they can have a similar impact.
Padgett is a project specialist for Maui Family Support Services at the Maui County Early Childhood Resource Center. She was on the job, arranging child care for families in parenting classes at Kaiser, when Heather Charles, the health education coordinator at Kaiser’s Maui Lani Medical Center and facilitator of the Member Advisory Council, heard the Padgetts’ story. She invited Melanie to bring her voice to the council.
“She is a joy to work with, and I deeply appreciate her care and compassion for improving patient care,” says Charles.
At council meetings, Padgett and other patients meet regularly with Kaiser Permanente staff to share a diversity of health care experiences and propose changes. Each month, Padgett shares her family’s experience with family practice doctors and nurses and regularly speaks at new- employee orientations.
“Her role is to represent the patients’ voice and collaborate with staff by providing insight into actual patient and family experiences at Kaiser Permanente facilities,” says Charles. “Melanie has a gentle and respectful way of communicating opportunities for improvement and for expressing her gratitude by highlighting what is going well. We are all better for it.”
Over the last five years, the Padgetts also have been involved with Organ Transplant Maui, a nonprofit that builds awareness and provides a support group for organ donors, recipients, families and caregivers, as well as those on the transplant waiting list.
“It’s a wonderful resource for patients and families going through the transplant process,” says Melanie Padgett. “We found it to be such a comfort. It’s also hope-sustaining to have people who have gone through the transplant process be available to answer questions about the difficult situations one encounters and how to cope — questions that maybe the doctors and nurses can’t really answer.
“It’s very rewarding to use our hard-earned experience to make the path of new transplant patients a little smoother.”
N.T. Arévalo is a storyteller and strategist who offers stories of pono across our land. Share your pono story and learn more at storystudiowriters.com.
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