Mark Pietrow spent more than 30 years in healthcare services before joining Liberty HealthShare as Director of Member Development. He had worked in sales across home health, respiratory therapy, and durable medical equipment. He understood systems, networks, and the administrative weight that medical situations carry. What he did not anticipate, when he arrived at the ministry’s Canton, Ohio, headquarters, was what happens when a member calls in distressed.
“It doesn’t happen maybe every day, but it happens regularly,” Pietrow said in an April 2026 interview. “We pray with our members. So we’ll have members that have been with us for years, and they’ll call in, and they’re having a tough time, whether it’s with some medical issue they’re dealing with or for some personal reason.”
That dimension of the work, he said, cannot be separated from what the ministry understands itself to be.
Open About It
Many organizations operating in the health services space maintain a careful professional distance from religion, especially in member-facing roles. Liberty HealthShare, as a non-profit ministry, holds a different position.
“What I really love about the ministry is, as you look at today’s outside world, there’s a lot of things that people are very careful about what you say and what you do in public,” Pietrow said. “But here we’re very open about praying.”
He pointed to one person on his team by name. “There’s one individual in particular on my team. Her name is Connie, and she on a regular basis will pray with people,” he said. “And I can’t tell you how moving that is when people give me feedback directly on how they appreciate the fact that we offer that. So that to me is inspirational, not only for the person that received that prayer, but for our whole team. That keeps us grounded to really what we’re really about as a Christian ministry.”
Every Friday, a List Arrives
Prayer at Liberty HealthShare extends beyond individual calls. The ministry runs a structured, organization-wide practice around it.
Chief Executive Officer Dorsey Morrow described the process in a separate interview: “We have a list that is distributed internally on every Friday of prayer requests from our members, and I get that. It’s one of those times during the day you just stop, you read through it, and then we pray over it. Whether it’s with the member or for the member, we are about prayer. We strongly believe in that here.”
That weekly distribution goes across the organization, reaching leadership and staff alike. Robert Kintigh, executive vice president for IT and Operations, oversees much of the Member Services team. Writing to members in the Q1 2026 Member Quarterly, he described the staff’s approach: “For them, this is far more than a job. It is an opportunity to provide comfort and support as they help members find their way through the often-complicated healthcare journey. Our staff members have a high level of affection and respect for our members. They pray with our members and develop friendships. The care which is obvious in phone calls continues long after the calls are complete.”
Kintigh also noted that staff are evaluated daily on the accuracy, timeliness, and presentation of information they provide. Within the ministry’s internal framework, competence and pastoral attention coexist as parallel expectations.
The PrayerBox
Members who want to submit a prayer request formally do not need to wait for a service call. Liberty HealthShare built a dedicated feature for it inside ShareBox, the ministry’s member portal.
The PrayerBox allows members to post requests for themselves or a family member and to pray for requests submitted by others in the community. Requests are directed to the ministry’s Pastoral Care Team through the same platform.
The PrayerBox sits inside the same personalized portal where members review submitted medical expenses, track sharing history, and update account information. Placing it there, among administrative tools rather than on an external page, reflects a deliberate organizational choice about what member support includes.
What Members Describe
Joanna Ward joined the Liberty HealthShare community in 2019 as a self-employed financial advisor without access to employer-sponsored options. Within the first year of membership, she faced a three-day COVID-19 hospitalization, multiple emergency room visits, and the death of her best friend from the same illness. She reflected on what the ministry meant through that season.
“To know that I’m with a ministry, where I pray for others and they pray for me, is priceless,” Ward said.
After her annual unshared amount was met, at least $19,000 in eligible medical expenses were shared by fellow members. Ward’s account of the experience did not separate the financial dimension from the spiritual and communal one surrounding it.
What It Reveals
Liberty HealthShare operates as a non-profit healthcare sharing ministry, a model in which members voluntarily share one another’s eligible medical expenses. The ministry’s mission statement commits to shepherding “the Christian tradition of healthcare sharing through prayer, education, personal responsibility, and stewardship of the community’s resources.”
Charity Navigator awarded the ministry a four-star rating, and the ministry holds the Candid GuideStar Gold Seal. Member surveys show an 80% approval rating. Its Google and Trustpilot ratings each sit at 4.5 stars, and it holds an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau.
Pietrow, coming from decades in more conventional healthcare environments, put the culture in terms of what distinguishes it day to day: “Being here together and really sharing in each other’s burdens. And the good news is, I’m going to knock on wood that everybody has a healthy year, but as a member you’re sharing into something that’s going to help somebody else. And then maybe one day you need that opportunity for help too. So you know where your dollars are going.”
