Photo by Brandon Alms

Brock Shamel is using his proactive attitude and passion for serving others to open up access to health care for patients throughout CoxHealth’s service area. 

On His Unexpected Career Trajectory
“I honestly was unsure of where I was going to land after graduation. My last semester of college, I needed an internship to graduate and by just the grace of God I got an internship opportunity and was able to start working in human resources and quality assurance. Toward the end of the semester, the director over the quality department lobbied that I actually go and work as a paid intern for the CEO, and now-president of the Cox Medical Center in Branson, William Mahoney.

“That's how I really got into administration and got to work alongside our physicians and the medical group. In many ways, health care was kind of a foreign territory for me, it was not something that I had really looked into. I had some interest in maybe public health of some sort, but not in the actual care delivery… It all kind of came together and I fell in love with supporting those who take care of patients. I don’t have a clinical education, but in many ways, I enjoy trying to find ways to help take care of patients.”

On Building Pathways for Patients
“In 2018 we saw a dramatic shift in how our patients were connecting to us… We had lost touch with what great access and great response looks like. We knew we had to shore that up. We opened up the schedules to a central number, we also turned on some online opportunities—a lot of patients like having self-serve capability, so we turned on some pathways to make that happen—and I think we found great results when we gave the autonomy to the patient to really choose… It was really a team effort all the way round from our physician leaders to our support teams essentially saying, ‘we have to have an attitude of ‘yes, we can.’

“Growing up on a farm, if there’s a problem that needs to be fixed, it’s really not an option [to not fix it]. In many ways it can mean the difference between success and failure. I have two parents who are very devoted, not only to the farm, but our family and their faith, and that consistency has been ingrained in me. And my wife is an incredible source of drive.”