​What happens when the way you self-identify is a taboo word? What do you do if the things you stand for make you a target? How do you escape when you’ve become your own worst enemy?

For this year’s storytellers—as for all of us—the answers are never simple, but they have a common thread: you’ll find them at Best-Kept Secrets, PCC’s 2024 Storytelling Show.

Sometimes, the best secrets are the ones we don’t keep.

This year’s cast of storytellers and secret-sharers includes:

Councilmember Gabe Albornoz, Chair of the Health & Human Services Committee
Nora Morales, Program Manager at Identity
César Palacios, Executive Director of Proyecto Salud
Edwin Rich, Co-Founder of Tree of Hope Association
Haseeb Shinwary, PCC’s Workforce Navigator Manager
Hillery Tsumba, PCC’s Chief Operating Officer

Join the Primary Care Coalition and our partners on Thursday, November 7th at the Silver Spring Civic Building for some of our very best secrets. We can’t wait to see you there.

Faith Ibura Ideki’s journey has taken her tens of thousands of miles, two continents, and almost five years. “Growing up in Nigeria, I dreamed of being a nurse.  I majored in Biochemistry in one of the Federal Universities of Technology in Nigeria with plans to join in the nursing program upon graduation. However, my husband’s career took us to Columbia, Missouri, where he accepted a position.  That changed everything.”  

​Faith had the good fortune to land a job at the University of Missouri hospital with duties supporting the nursing care team.  "I assisted with everything, including helping doctors, storing supplies, and providing patients with basic medical care."  I felt like I was helping people even though I wasn't a nurse.

When her husband was offered a new position in Washington, DC Faith and her family gathered their possessions, packed up, and relocated to Silver Spring, Maryland. "Because of my experience in Missouri, I had a better understanding of how to secure another position in health care," she explained. Unfortunately, despite her significant experience and excellent recommendations from past colleagues, she learned she would need certification if she wanted to be a part of clinical care teams in Maryland. And, as fate would have it, an informal conversation with a neighbor pointed her to an opportunity, putting everything back on track. 

"It was just a casual talk, and I mentioned to my friend that I was looking into getting the necessary certification. Here I was unemployed and looking for a way to become a nurse.   My friend told me that Montgomery College had a curriculum that was ideal for me, and that the Primary Care Coalition had a tuition assistance program.  Well, I applied to the program through PCC and was fortunate enough to be accepted as part of the second set of certified nursing assistant (CNA) students in the program. It was a blessing."

PCC’s Workforce Capacity program, a project of Nexus Montgomery, was created to meet hospital needs for entry-level healthcare workers and to provide career- path employment opportunities for diverse community members. The program is partnering with community organizations for outreach and student support, and scholarships provide community members with certification training at Montgomery College, designed as a first step into a healthcare career.  

After graduating from the CNA training program at Montgomery College in early October, Faith accepted an offer from Kensington Senior Living Center. By accepting the scholarship, she is committed to providing care in Montgomery County for a year. As Faith reflects on how far she has come, she says, "I understand that so much of what we achieve is because of the help of others. I wouldn't be where I am now if it hadn't been for the support from my husband and friends, as well as the significant boost provided by PCC.  I wish more people knew about it, since I know others are on the same path as me." 

"It took me a while,” she says, “but now finally I'm doing what I've always wanted to do: take care of people." 

Nexus Montgomery is a partnership of Montgomery County’s six hospitals and was created to improve health care quality and access in the county. 

A grant from the U.S. Department of Labor(DOL)’s Employment and Training Administration funds 92.8% ($1.3 million) of the cost to train 200 healthcare workers and increase Montgomery College training capacity between December 2023 and November 2025. Non-governmental funds, including support from Maryland Physicians Care, support 7.2% ($101,615) of these costs. Additional workforce capacity efforts have been supported by WorkSource Montgomery, Maryland Physicians Care, and the Maryland Department of Labor.

Marisol Ortiz is the Primary Care Coalition’s Director of Family Centered Care and—with 24 years of service—one of the organization’s most senior employees. She oversees the Care for Kids (CFK) program, ensuring PCC and partners meet healthcare needs for more than 6,000 children each year (CFK had more than 10,000 participants in FY24!). She coordinates with partners, listens to patient and community needs, anticipates immigration trends, coordinates with stakeholders, addresses program compliance issues and environmental impacts, and manages budgets, data, and reports.

“I love my job,” said Ortiz. “Working with children and families and giving them peace of mind by providing them with the health care they need impacts their lives in a meaningful way.” 

Ortiz was born and raised in Puerto Rico, where she still has family. After earning her political science degree, she came to this area for an internship with Univision’s Washington News Bureau. Ortiz found the news business exciting, but marriage and family soon took priority when she unexpectedly fell in love. She eventually found a job at PCC that suited her interests and skills and allowed her the flexibility she needed to raise her two sons and a daughter. 

“I have been able to use my skills here to help people,” said Ortiz. “I understand policy and how decisions are made, and I know how important it is to gather community input to fully understand the depth of the needs. I see the whole spectrum, so my degree and previous experience have helped me with my job.”
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“I want to be a voice of the community,” said Ortiz. “I want to ensure we implement programs and policies that really help people. Sometimes, programs and policies aren’t as successful as we want them to be because we haven’t listened deeply enough to what the community needs and how they want it and will use it. Making sure that that happens is what I like best about my work. It feels good to improve the health and lives of the people in the community.”

As an immigrant herself, Ortiz says she is driven to help others struggling to figure out life in a new country while overcoming a language barrier. She points to the powerful impact of services for children. She notes that a mother recently expressed gratitude for the behavioral health services that saved her daughter’s life. The ripple effect of those services likely saved the family, too, and impacted all those in the community who knew that child. 

“This is a good example of why it is so important to focus on children’s health needs,” said Ortiz. “There is a return on investment, and we can break the cycle and get where we need to be, with everyone healthy and well.”

Colleagues may not know that Marisol Ortiz is a self-proclaimed romantic who enjoys listening to music in her spare time and watching Netflix K-Dramas because they are beautiful. She also enjoys reading romantic novels. 

The Ortiz family also has a cat named Kaira, the featured Pet of the Month in the “Pets of PCC” section of the September Pulse. 

As a storyteller in PCC’s first Storytelling Show in 2019, Marisol’s story still lives online and in PCC’s FY19 Annual Report. Her colleagues will share new stories at this year’s “Best Kept Secrets Storytelling Show” event on November 7. The Storytelling Show is the Primary Care Coalition’s annual fundraising event supporting healthcare services for the community’s neediest residents. It is a good cause and one of the most enjoyable evenings around, leaving guests entertained and inspired. Buy a ticket today so you don’t miss out.

The Montgomery Cares (MCares) program provides access to comprehensive health services for more than 20,000 low-income, uninsured residents of Montgomery County each year and generally meets or exceeds national care quality benchmarks for Medicaid providers. Together, those data points indicate the program succeeds in helping nearly 2% of county residents stay healthy every year. But how do those outcomes compare to the level of need in the community? Are there gaps in our provider networks that leave out some of the very residents we aim to serve? To find out, the Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services and the Primary Care Coalition (PCC) partnered with NORC at the University of Chicago to conduct a Montgomery Cares Network Adequacy study and report on the results.
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Those results [1] were largely positive, particularly in terms of the program’s reach. Of the estimated 25,775 Montgomery County residents potentially eligible for the program between 2021 and 2023, MCares actually served 23,539 of them—or 91% — with a caveat that results are based on census data and may undercount the potentially eligible population. It also generally met Maryland Medicaid network standards (15-minute drive, 10 mile distance), though the report noted a subset of patients (<15%) did not select the closest partner clinic as their medical home. The table below offers a comparison of MCares results to Medicaid time standards as reported in the final report.

​One challenge noted was for accessibility by public transit. When applying the Medicaid network standards to public transit routes, only 39% of participants had adequate access to any partner health center and even fewer (10%) had adequate access to their preferred health center. However, the report noted several clinic partners have existing programs to fund transport through ride share services. The accessibility results by car are positive: “Given the distribution of patients and health centers, it appears that participating health centers are well situated to serve both the current and eligible patient population.” However, the local public transportation infrastructure does not adequately support patients without access to a vehicle in timely transit to the safety-net clinics.   

However, there remain areas for improvement, particularly in access to specialty care, which faces substantially longer wait times than for primary care visits. Patients also noted that appointments during nontraditional operating hours would make access easier, though 58.8% of patients surveyed reported 9:00 am – 5:00 pm on weekdays as their desired appointment window. (Weekday mornings from 6:00 am – 8:00 am was the most popular window for nontraditional hours of operation, selected by 31.4%.) And 22% of patients surveyed responded that “more money to pay for visits and medicine” would improve access, despite the relatively low patient cost of MCares (there are no monthly premiums, and co-pays are capped at $35/visit for patients at or below 100% of the federal poverty level).

Other results of note, include:
- Participants most commonly reported using the hospital/ER as an alternative source for care, a result that underscores the importance of the healthcare safety net as an investment in hospital diversion. 
- The overwhelming majority of participants (71%) found the MCares program through their personal networks, rather than through formal outreach or referral programs. 
- The study also reported on predictive modeling of utilization over fiscal years (FY) 2025 and 2026 [2].  Results indicated the number of encounters will approach the budgeted 72,000 encounters for FY25 and grow to more than 74,000 in FY26. The degree of increase predicted for FY26 will increase program budget needs. 

Perhaps the most important takeaway: patient trust in our clinic partners is strong. “Patients widely shared that they trusted the medical advice offered by their providers and felt empowered to make decisions about their healthcare,” the accompanying Survey and Focus Group Summary [3] noted, “affirming that providers were easy to understand and explained concepts well.” 

This article has not been reviewed or approved by the Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services.

End Notes
1.   NORC at the University of Chicago. Montgomery Cares Program (MCares) Network Adequacy Assessment: Final Report. May 2024. 
2.  NORC at the University of Chicago. Montgomery Cares Program (MCares) Patient and Encounter Projections for Fiscal Years (FYs) 2025 and 2026: Final Report. May 2024.
3.   NORC at the University of Chicago. Montgomery Cares Program (MCares) Network Adequacy Assessment Patient Voice: Survey + Focus Group Summary Final Report. May 2024.