When the small city of Jamestown, Tenn., lost its only hospital in 2019 due to financial constraints, emergency services had to take patients to another hospital nearly an hour away.
Samuel LeFave, a Christian and recent Tennessee Tech biochemistry graduate, was interested in medical school when he got to know a family in Jamestown and heard about the desperate state of rural health care.
His pastor at Life Church in Cookeville asked him about setting up a medical program, since LeFave had worked with a free clinic as an undergraduate.
LeFave, then 21 years old, dropped his medical school plans in favor of meeting the immediate local problem.
Doing Unto Others Mobile Mission, or DUO, launched in 2021.
The ministry started in 2021 and only operates monthly a few months a year, but it has saved the US health system $3.8 million and 42 emergency room visits, according to DUO's estimates using the Mobile Health Map evaluation from Harvard Medical School.
Jamestown needed DUO's support after losing its only hospital in 2019 due to financial constraints.
Emergency services had to take local patients to another hospital nearly an hour away.
Another hospital in Cumberland closed in 2020.
Tennessee allows volunteer medical services without much liability.
Still, studies have shown that in rural areas with few
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In the world of social enterprises, failure is a cringe-worthy moment nobody wants to talk about. But, social entrepreneurs can benefit from their failures.