Key results
- Better patient care The ability to securely share information with patients about their health has empowered patients in the clinic’s care and facilitated a better connection between doctor and patient.
- Anytime access Dr Uppal and her team can stay on top of letters, results and case history from anywhere, and at any time, meaning their time can be used more efficiently while with patients.
- Fantastic support Dr Uppal feels the team at Clinic to Cloud has listened to her desire to have a paperless practice, and have provided solutions, training and support to assist in starting and growing her practice.
Dr Talat Uppal is an Obstetrician and Gynaecologist and is the Director of Women's Health Road.
Working from both the Northern Beaches and Hornsby Ku-ring-gai Hospitals as a Visiting Medical Officer, and more recently starting her own practice, Dr Uppal is dedicated to an innovative, integrated, multidisciplinary practice, with a strong family-centred approach to maternity care and women’s health.
Along with Dr Uppal, the practice includes a midwife, a dedicated physio with a women's health focus, integrated ultrasound, mental health via a perinatal psychiatrist to provide the wide spectrum of obstetric and gynecology services. It is a constantly further-developing service intended to provide a one-stop type of medical care combining various clinicians with a special interest to team together for the convenience of the patients.
“I chose the name ‘Women’s Health Road’ for my practice because I think women are on various journeys as far as their health is concerned at different stages of their life. And what we want as a team is to support them in their health paths, and in their choices as they go through these times,” Dr Uppal says.
Challenge
Dr Uppal and her team are deeply committed to supporting women as best they can, in a wide variety of womens health needs, and a strong connection with patients is key to this support. Dr Uppal has many patients, and operates across different locations with different providers. Therefore, she needs to ensure she is supporting women with the best information at the right time, and that all her health practitioners have access to the latest patient information.
“Some of the challenges I've encountered in clinical practice were around how to support women better with streamlined information for them as they embark on surgical journeys or they need pregnancy based care and subsequent birth of a baby,” Dr Uppal explains.“So in different contexts, we wanted to be able to support our patients with evidence based consistent in a way that is easy for them to manage.”
Medicolegally, Dr Talat says the system is far more robust, as it captures all the written medical information provided to the patient in the patient portal and in her clinical files as well.
“It serves as an enhanced communication tool for subsequent follow up visits, whereby the discussion is based on the patient having read those specific preoperative or other clinical written digital information and opportunity is provided to actively input, ask questions and address queries around the clinical care,” she explains.
The other challenge Dr Uppal had was around creating a system that helped support lots of different people caring for these women and their families, and a digital environment where that information could be shared safely, in a secure and collaborative environment.
“Connection is a concept that really fascinates me,” Dr Uppal explains.
“Whether it's the context of connection with your patient, or connection within the team, or connection with the general practitioners that are sending us this patient, at the end of the day, the concept is still the same. How do we engage better with the women and their families we care for?”
The Solution
Dr Uppal needed a software solution to help her communicate with her practitioners and patients in a streamlined and secure way. She was clear she wanted a cloud-based solution, and a Patient Portal. Clinic to Cloud covered all those bases.
“I chose Clinic to Cloud over other providers because it gave me the option of a Patient Portal, which I have found personally to be very positive, because we can actually communicate with our patients in a secure digital context about their care,” she says.
“For example, in a pre-operative journey, when we're booking someone for surgery, we're able to share information around the surgery directly and securely. I didn't want to be relying on emails, because patient data is very sensitive. The Patient Portal has been so phenomenal in this space, we feel so much more connected to our patients now.”
“To me, time is your most precious commodity, and I want to be able to use it functionally. And so now, if I'm operating and I have time between patients, I can actually use it to review results, I can write letters - I can use that time very productively because I have all the information at the tips of my fingers.”
Finally, all clinical staff in Dr Uppal’s practice should be able to see others' notes in a secure environment, in real-time. This is where Clinic to Cloud helped support a more collaborative care setting.
“So for example, the women's health physio would have put a note in the clinical journey, which I can now read thanks to Clinic to Cloud,” Dr Uppal explains. “And I've moved from physically sending someone to a physio and sometimes getting a report back, or sometimes not getting a report back, and then having to scan it into the system, to this very efficient model where we have all the information available in a chronological manner,about the woman's care right away within Clinic to Cloud.”
The Results
Dr Uppal says the Patient Portal has given her patients ownership of their own care journeys, which has facilitated a better connection between doctor and patient. Practice efficiencies have also improved, with a reduction in double-up and paper usage, and streamlining workflows so staff and doctors can spend more time with patients.
“The Patient Portal allows me to share information with the patient, and they enjoy the transparency, and the ownership. They've been very appreciative this is available to them now,” Dr Uppal says. “Also, the information is paperless: it’s not a hardcopy pamphlet they might lose. We only have one planet, and it is a duty on all of us to look at our footprints and how we can optimise workflows using less paper. And Clinic to Cloud helps support more sustainable, paperless workflow practices.”
“I am truly very grateful for the support that we've had from the Clinic to Cloud team. I have felt that they’ve understood our request to minimise paper in our surgery, optimise our patient workflow, create more efficiency and less duplication.”
“I had this dream that we send patients’ letters on the day of service, and I feel so happy now when I look at my letters and it's only one or zero to do, because I've actually been able to keep pace because our workflow is so optimised with Clinic to Cloud.”
Dr Uppal found Clinic to Cloud helps the team stay more connected to each other as well. It allows everyone to use each day more productively because the workflow is now automated and the team is not wasting time on mundane tasks.
“I think the sophistication of just being able to share information with the team has been an absolute plus for us with Clinic to Cloud. An integrated practice model does require more love for it to get off the ground and for it to be running in the way that it's intended, and Clinic to Cloud has helped support that journey all the way,” she says.
“We want the woman to be at the centre of the care and to have access to information - it is her body, it is her investigation results and her clinical details. And I'm so delighted we have a tool like Clinic to Cloud to be able to empower the women we care for. This amazing technology allowed us to create a foundation upon which we've been able to layer this fantastic model of care. It has served us well during this pandemic, with a solid telehealth base and remote/virtual access to patient medical records.”
