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Indiana Hernia Center Transforms with Mobile Patient Communication

Dr. Paul Szotek of Carmel, Indiana’s Indiana Hernia Center, has strong feelings about what he refers to as the “loss of the doctor-patient relationship.” He claimed that the corporate takeover of healthcare and the departure of doctors from private practice to employed positions have resulted in increased patient and physician frustration with the existing healthcare delivery model and sub-par implementation of electronic health records and patient portals.

According to him, as the employed paradigm has evolved, physicians have lost more autonomy in providing treatment to their patients to maximize the doctor-patient relationship. As a result, he added, the market is moving away from the traditional healthcare experience. It’s watching patients look for doctors in the same way they look for coffee shops, restaurants, or hotels in their neighborhood.

According to Szotek, most patients use the internet to study their symptoms and prospective surgeons before scheduling a consultation. He realized that to succeed in private practice, and he would have to approach hernia treatment in a radically different way. To help fuel its values, the Indiana Hernia Center turned to health IT vendor Klara.

Szotek explained, “The purpose of implementation of Klara was to bring back the one-on-one relationship of the past between doctor and patient that has eroded with the implementation of healthcare technology and break down the communication barriers that cause dissatisfaction along the hernia care delivery pathway.”

Indeed, one of the most challenging aspects of EHR-based portals is acceptance, with the best only reaching 60-75 percent, he added. With user adoption at the top of the team’s priority list, it became clear that Klara was one of the only solutions available to meet both the team’s connectivity needs and provide a superior user experience that would drive adoption.

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