Pablo Hernández

Dr. Pablo Hernandez, a Venezuelan native chose to practice in Massachusetts after graduating from medical school.

Hernandez is the Chief Medical Officer at the Edward M. Kennedy Community Health Center.

Hernandez also serves on the board of the YMCA for Central Massachusetts and the Regional Environmental Council, two groups focused on youth, leadership and sustainability.

In his time with his patients, Dr. Pablo Hernandez always finds a way to have a laugh with them; even if the diagnosis is as serious as cancer.

“Even in those stressful circumstances, I find a way to connect and find something to laugh about,” Hernandez said. For him, laughter and connection is key to better outcomes for the patients. Medicine, he believes, is about treating the whole patient, them, their families and entire community without reservation or prejudice.

It is an intimacy between the patient and provider; a connection that spans time, distance and generations, Hernandez said. Sometimes, establishing that connection is as simple as wearing a colorful pair of socks, a gaudy tie, or sharing a “Dad” joke.

The Venezuelan native chose to practice in Massachusetts after graduating from medical school; Hernandez is the Chief Medical Officer at the Edward M. Kennedy Community Health Center.

The federal-funded organization serves more than 32,000 patients at three locations in Central Massachusetts; Framingham, Milford and Worcester. For its patients, the health center is the only source of health care they can access.

Hernandez also serves on the board of the YMCA for Central Massachusetts and the Regional Environmental Council, two groups focused on youth, leadership and sustainability. He loves the urban gardening projects sponsored by the Council that are bringing foods from African nations, Brazil, and other cultures to Central Massachusetts.

His Massachusetts roots run deep, Hernandez attended kindergarten in Belmont when his father, a surgeon, was in training in Boston. The family returned to Venezuela, but his father always encouraged travel and training in different countries.

Determined to follow in his father’s footsteps as a surgeon, Hernandez attended the Colegio San Ignacio de Loyola in Caracas and the Universidad Central se Venezuela. He later honed his skills at the University of Connecticut and earned a master’s in medical administration from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

But as he matured in his profession, Hernandez realized that what he most valued was the connections he formed with his patients. His training in Venezuela has influenced his approach to medicine. Hernandez also cites the textbook “The Service Minded Physician,” a compilation of physician experiences in health equity and humanism-in-medicine.

Hernandez is not alone in his wholistic approach he finds that most clinicians working at community centers are family physicians, caring for the whole patient.

Hernandez balances his patient load with his responsibilities in medical administration for the three Kennedy-affiliated health center locations. He sees about 600 patients, many of whom have followed him around to the different jobs he has held; in Worcester, in Boston, and now in central Massachusetts, throughout his more than two decades of service.

As a wholistic family doctor, Hernandez will agree to see a patient’s family member regardless of his patient lead. A wholistic approach, he believes, means addressing a patient’s entire environment.

Hernandez finds that reconciling a personal approach, a feature of health care in other countries, with the American health care system is challenging. Insurance requirements and paperwork can be daunting. He worries about the trajectory of the American health care system; and even the trajectory of the system in Massachusetts.

“Something is broken,” Hernandez said, acknowledging that for innovation; robotic surgery, breakthrough genetic therapies, the American system is stellar. But he also pointed out that day-to-day care can be challenging.

On a family trip to Dubai his son suffered a foot injury. In seeking medical help, the family had a choice of hospital, immediate treatment at the emergency room, and was refunded their deposit after treatment.

“It should be that simple,” Hernandez said.

Hernandez is married to an ophthalmologist who works in pharmaceuticals; they have one son. He confesses he is secretly excited that the high school senior is talking about entering the medical field as he applies to colleges.

“I like my job,” Hernandez said, and would encourage anyone who wanted to enter the field. He adds that for him, it’s not about making money, it’s about treating patients and creating that unique and very intimate connection with them. “Their heart has to be in the right place.”

Hernandez delights in travel and when in other countries seeks out opportunities to learn how local doctors approach their work. Spanish doctors, amongst the lowest paid and arguably hardest working of all medical partitioners in the industrialized world, also have the highest job satisfaction, thanks, Hernandez believes, to their connection with their patients.

“My friend in Mallorca greets her patients by their first names,” Hernandez said. Her focus, he said, is strictly on the patient, not on the paperwork.