When Tamarack Family Medicine Needed a Loan, Mascoma Bank Made It Happen 

• Luke Awtry
• Phil Kiely, co-owner, Tamarack Family Medicine

When you're sick, you want to see a doctor you know and trust. For many patients at Tamarack Family Medicine in Morrisville, that's Phil Kiely.

Tamarack's co-owner has been a physician for more than 30 years. As a primary care provider, he sees patients at all stages of their lives. And he knows they're looking for more than just a diagnosis. "People want to be heard, validated, reassured," he said.

Kiely believes strongly in providing that kind of individualized patient care. It's why, in 2019, he and two other doctors decided to leave the local community health center and start their own practice.

They needed a loan to buy a building and get their new business off the ground, so they approached a bank with a branch in town. They thought having another clinic in Morrisville would be a boon to the community, and they believed their patients would follow them.

But the bank turned them down. Kiely was stunned.

So he turned to someone from the financial world that he knew and trusted: Peter Jones, who works for Mascoma Bank. The two served together on the Lamoille South School Board. Jones met with Kiely the day he called, and put him and his partners in touch with the Private Banking team at Mascoma, which provides concierge-level personalized services for professional practices like Tamarack.

Unlike most banks, Mascoma is a Certified B Corporation. It makes lending decisions with the communities it serves in mind. Helping local doctors open an independent practice in a small Vermont town made sense to Mascoma.

"They told us right away, 'we can make this happen,'" Kiely recalled, "and they made it happen. They did everything that needed to be done, and did it fast. We were really impressed."

With Mascoma's help, Kiely and his partners got right to work; today Tamarack's 14-person team serves roughly 6,000 patients. If they call at night, after the doors are closed, they can trust that someone will still answer the phone. The voice on the other end is almost always a familiar one.

At Tamarack, Kiely said, "people feel like they're known." He's grateful that the same is true of Mascoma.

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This article was commissioned and paid for by Mascoma Bank.
Member FDIC. Equal Housing Lender.