There have been so many changes in this medical practice and life in general that I thought it best to start a newsletter for my patients. I appreciate all the recommendations and referrals that our established patients have initiated. Our patients are our best advertisement. My goal has always been to be available to my patients. By this, I mean that I do not wish to erect barriers to your healthcare. I want appointments to be made easily and without unreasonable delay. I, also, want enough time in the appointment to adequately address your needs. I want to stay on schedule as I value your time. I am trying to create a personalized, patient-centered medical practice. I also feel that part of providing personalized healthcare is that I share with you some of my personal thoughts and directions.
The 9-11 terrorist acts followed by bioterrorism have radically changed all our lives. I have devoted some time to continuing education to more readily identify signs of anthrax, smallpox and radiation exposure. I hope to God that I never have to use that knowledge. I have been impressed by the numbers of my patients that responded to the 9-11 tragedy and volunteered their time and expertise in New York. Their skills included logistic support, search & rescue, and grief counseling. I have been impressed by their stories, expertise, and giving nature.
The practice has experienced much lesser changes. It became apparent that my physician staff at Ponderosa Medical did not hold the same commitment and vision that I had when I founded the practice in September 1999. I have always been committed to the use of computerized tools that will allow me to schedule appropriately and spend more time face to face with my patients.
Drs. McAllister, Patterson, Lewis, and Williams are no longer associates of Ponderosa Medical. All separations are painful, but with time they will heal.
I have a great staff.
· Jan: Jan has been my office medical assistant for the past two years. I have depended on her to interface with my patients, to schedule tests, draw blood, and get the results to me and my patients. She has been steadfastly loyal, pleasant, dependable, and empathic. Great stuff!
· Tonya: Tonya’s skills were honed during her years with the military and then with medical systems in The Dalles and St. Charles Medical Center. Her job has been to send claims to insurers, send statements to our patients, and keep patient accounts correct and updated. She has developed personal contacts with the various insurance companies and at times must fight (read advocate) for our patients to receive the benefits they are entitled to. She is precise, detailed, and a hard worker.
· Rita: Rita’s skill is being Rita. She sits at the front desk and greets patients as they enter the clinic and answers the phone to make appointments. She is the ambassador of the clinic. Her people skills are delightful and fun. She sets the tone for the entire office.
Ponderosa Medical is building a new office. Our present office is 3,000 square feet and the new one will be 5,800 square feet and allow us to grow up to six physicians. It is located off the traffic circle at Colorado & Century Drive in the Washington Century Center. It will be the first medical office on the West side.
As we build the new office and interview for more physicians to join us, we need to attract more patients. The best referrals come from our patients. I thank you for your help.
We want to limit the need for emergency room visits and urgency care center visits. The telephone is a wonderful tool, but most physicians find it difficult to diagnose and treat conditions remotely by the phone. The physician’s medical assistant can often answer simple questions. When the questions are complex it is best to have face-to-face time with your physician.
Our physicians are available after hours by cell phone, and most patients respect their physician’s need for personal time. However, if a medical condition is felt that it can not wait until the next business day, patients may call our office after hours. A recorded message will direct the caller through a series of touch-tone prompts to connect the caller to the physician’s cellular phone. There is some “dead air time” as our phone system does a call forward to the cellular phone. Prescriptions are not refilled after hours.
The Internet with e-mail appears to be a useful tool for certain kinds of communications. It is not secure and privacy issues exist when communicating personal medical issues. We have used the Internet to pass information back and forth between those patients who are comfortable with the degree of privacy presently available.
Our office uses an integrated software product developed jointly by Drs. Frost & Gilbert Lee (www.in-med.com) designed to be comprehensive and patient-centered. Five percent of the 600,000 physicians in the United States use electronic medical records. Our goals in using electronic medical records is to use it as a business tool to reduce the number of employees and hassles with keeping track of paper charts and pieces of paper. In that process we can be more responsive to our patient’s needs and actually spend more time face-to-face with our patients than in clinics stuck in the paper world.
Dr. Frost Lee is a consultant working with the Oregon Medical Association in teaching physicians compliance with the Federal law HIPAA (Health Information Portability & Accountability Act) standards. The law passed congress in 1996 and went into effect 2001 but with a 2-year grace period for compliance. It is 1,500 pages long and few people are knowledgeable regarding it. We have created a Notice of Privacy Practices for our office. This document is available to every patient. The law allows patients the right to read their medical record and to make amendments to it that must become part of the medical record.
We have just received our flu vaccine. There have been manufacturing difficulties. We are charging $14.20 for the vaccinations. We recommend our high-risk patients (Over 65; Chronic pulmonary, cardiovascular, or diabetes disease or on immuno-suppressive medications like Prednisone and Rheumatrex) receive a vaccination. Any of our patients are welcome to stop by the clinic for the vaccination up until January 15.
Thank you for your support during this time of change. Building a new office specifically for a paperless medical practice will be challenging but also fun. I will be assembling a group of excellent associates to take care of this growing medical practice. I have four physicians eager to relocate to Bend when we have the space and patients for them. Three of the four are women and all work in offices using electronic medical records.
Our emphasis will always be to provide personalized healthcare for men, women and adolescence and work with patients on their preventative care.