Mary Jane Joseph is a project manager for the Primary Care Coalition (PCC), overseeing cancer screening programs for our community’s most vulnerable residents. She serves uninsured individuals facing various challenges that make it difficult to seek and access healthcare. Joseph works hard to ensure that life-saving cancer screening is as easy as possible for everyone. She is also the chair of the Maryland Cancer Screening Workgroup, helping to spread the need for cancer screening and best practices across the state.
Giving “glory to the clinics” for their hard work in increasing colorectal cancer screening rates by as much as 50 percent under an initial one-year state grant that is now ongoing, Joseph notes that the clinics welcome all process improvement efforts and are committed to providing the best care to the patients they serve, despite being stretched in budget and staffing. Joseph is also proud of new efforts to offer all Montgomery Cares patients Cologuard test kits at no cost to detect colorectal cancer and for a partnership with Luminis Health that will provide 100 additional colonoscopies for patients in need.
Joseph has worked for PCC for nearly 16 years and will celebrate her work anniversary in October. Her colleagues might be surprised to learn that she does not have a public health background. Before joining the organization, she had a long career in psychiatric nursing. She worked as a floor nurse, a residential treatment director, and Senior Director of Behavioral Health at Mid-Atlantic Medical Services (MAMSI), which transitioned to UnitedHealthcare while she was there. In that position, she was responsible for the quality of behavioral health care in Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, and North Carolina.
“I really missed spending time with patients, and at the time, I was on the Board of Governance for Adventist Behavioral Health; I knew they needed a position filled, so I went over there to become Director of Admissions and Residential Treatment and then Chief Nursing Officer,” said Joseph. The treatment facility was then known as Potomac Ridge Behavioral Health Center (now Adventist HealthCare Shady Grove Medical Center - Mental Health).
“When I left there, I took a break to spend time with my grandchildren, and I was enjoying myself because we were going on field trips, having sleepovers, and going to the pool, and having a great time,” said Joseph. “My husband was like, are you going back to work?”
Joseph admits that she “works because she likes to work.”
“I’d seen this job at PCC, and they wanted someone to start patient navigation. Since I had started a patient care management system in psych, I knew I could transfer my skills. My first assignment when I got the job was to develop patient navigation here in the clinics. All of the clinics now have some form of patient navigation,” said Joseph.
“Helping people” is what Mary Jane Joseph loves most about her job, and she is driven by her passion to make healthcare and cancer screenings equally—and easily—accessible to everyone.
“Uninsured patients should be treated the same as insured patients when it comes to testing so that they don’t have to worry about getting that done,” said Joseph. “We need to make the testing as easy as possible since many of these patients still have other barriers to overcome, like transportation, time off from work, and childcare.”
She points out that patient outcomes are better when cancer is caught early through preventive screenings. Regular mammograms can detect breast cancer at the earliest stages. FIT and Cologuard testing, as well as colonoscopies, can detect colorectal cancer early. Hospitals also benefit from preventive screenings because early detection diverts patients from ending up in their emergency rooms with severe, undiagnosed symptoms and late-stage diseases that are harder to treat.
Joseph also connected the University of Maryland School of Nursing with the Montgomery County safety-net clinics to provide a community health clinical experience for nursing students. As a clinical instructor, she wanted to provide students with insight into the difficulties of community health nursing. Joseph continues to work with nursing students who want to volunteer in the clinics.
One little-known fact about Mary Jane Joseph is that “Mary Jane” is her first name, and she has no middle name. “Mary” is what most people call her. She was named “Mary” after her father’s mother and “Jane” after her mother’s mother, and she grew up with each of those families calling her either “Mary” or “Janie.” Her husband calls her “Mary Jane” when he’s annoyed.
Mary Jane Joseph and her husband live with their three-year-old rescue cat, Boogie, who is the master of the house. She is close with her family, which includes a grown son and daughter and four grandchildren (three boys and a girl). The youngest grandson has graduated from high school, and the oldest has a six-month-old daughter, making Joseph a great-grandmother.
“We have a condo at the beach, I can travel when I want to, and I do a lot with my church and am involved with my faith,” said Joseph. “I am very content.”
With a love of travel, a trip through New England is part of Mary Jane Joseph’s plans for this fall.
Giving “glory to the clinics” for their hard work in increasing colorectal cancer screening rates by as much as 50 percent under an initial one-year state grant that is now ongoing, Joseph notes that the clinics welcome all process improvement efforts and are committed to providing the best care to the patients they serve, despite being stretched in budget and staffing. Joseph is also proud of new efforts to offer all Montgomery Cares patients Cologuard test kits at no cost to detect colorectal cancer and for a partnership with Luminis Health that will provide 100 additional colonoscopies for patients in need.
Joseph has worked for PCC for nearly 16 years and will celebrate her work anniversary in October. Her colleagues might be surprised to learn that she does not have a public health background. Before joining the organization, she had a long career in psychiatric nursing. She worked as a floor nurse, a residential treatment director, and Senior Director of Behavioral Health at Mid-Atlantic Medical Services (MAMSI), which transitioned to UnitedHealthcare while she was there. In that position, she was responsible for the quality of behavioral health care in Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, and North Carolina.
“I really missed spending time with patients, and at the time, I was on the Board of Governance for Adventist Behavioral Health; I knew they needed a position filled, so I went over there to become Director of Admissions and Residential Treatment and then Chief Nursing Officer,” said Joseph. The treatment facility was then known as Potomac Ridge Behavioral Health Center (now Adventist HealthCare Shady Grove Medical Center - Mental Health).
“When I left there, I took a break to spend time with my grandchildren, and I was enjoying myself because we were going on field trips, having sleepovers, and going to the pool, and having a great time,” said Joseph. “My husband was like, are you going back to work?”
Joseph admits that she “works because she likes to work.”
“I’d seen this job at PCC, and they wanted someone to start patient navigation. Since I had started a patient care management system in psych, I knew I could transfer my skills. My first assignment when I got the job was to develop patient navigation here in the clinics. All of the clinics now have some form of patient navigation,” said Joseph.
“Helping people” is what Mary Jane Joseph loves most about her job, and she is driven by her passion to make healthcare and cancer screenings equally—and easily—accessible to everyone.
“Uninsured patients should be treated the same as insured patients when it comes to testing so that they don’t have to worry about getting that done,” said Joseph. “We need to make the testing as easy as possible since many of these patients still have other barriers to overcome, like transportation, time off from work, and childcare.”
She points out that patient outcomes are better when cancer is caught early through preventive screenings. Regular mammograms can detect breast cancer at the earliest stages. FIT and Cologuard testing, as well as colonoscopies, can detect colorectal cancer early. Hospitals also benefit from preventive screenings because early detection diverts patients from ending up in their emergency rooms with severe, undiagnosed symptoms and late-stage diseases that are harder to treat.
Joseph also connected the University of Maryland School of Nursing with the Montgomery County safety-net clinics to provide a community health clinical experience for nursing students. As a clinical instructor, she wanted to provide students with insight into the difficulties of community health nursing. Joseph continues to work with nursing students who want to volunteer in the clinics.
One little-known fact about Mary Jane Joseph is that “Mary Jane” is her first name, and she has no middle name. “Mary” is what most people call her. She was named “Mary” after her father’s mother and “Jane” after her mother’s mother, and she grew up with each of those families calling her either “Mary” or “Janie.” Her husband calls her “Mary Jane” when he’s annoyed.
Mary Jane Joseph and her husband live with their three-year-old rescue cat, Boogie, who is the master of the house. She is close with her family, which includes a grown son and daughter and four grandchildren (three boys and a girl). The youngest grandson has graduated from high school, and the oldest has a six-month-old daughter, making Joseph a great-grandmother.
“We have a condo at the beach, I can travel when I want to, and I do a lot with my church and am involved with my faith,” said Joseph. “I am very content.”
With a love of travel, a trip through New England is part of Mary Jane Joseph’s plans for this fall.
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