Angela Beals

Angela Beals of Calabasas Pediatrics in California talks about how PCC has worked for her practice, specifically on the topics of:

Implementation
Patient portal
PCC family
Support
Vaccine forecasting
Working remotely

So, my name is Angela Beals and I work as the Office Manager here at Calabasas Pediatrics.
It’s just, it’s very different from a traditional practice. We’re a little bit more personal and are able to spend more time with our patients and really get to know them. And I just, you know, I enjoy knowing all my families by name, and when they call – and, you know, just getting to form a closer relationship with them.
So, me and Dr. Tanya have both been here about three years – we started the office up together as a brand-new office. My overall experience with PCC has been wonderful. They’ve been with us since the beginning. They helped us set up our office, set up our EHR. They were very receptive to what we need, what we were looking for and helped customize the EHR a little bit more specific for our practice. As well the support – the support is wonderful. We call, somebody is always available to take our call. We send an email, we get something back within 15, 20 minutes… which is very helpful when you have questions as you’re also running your day to day office tasks. So it’s been wonderful.
So my favorite PCC story was, in the very beginning, PCC sent out some of their team to help us set up our office and they just made us feel like we were part of their family. They made sure that everybody knew how to use the system. We laughed, we joked, there was no pressure in how quickly we needed to learn the system. We went to lunch, we went to dinner and we just laughed, and we just had a really good time and just really connected with some of the PCC team.
Some of my favorite tools with PCC would definitely be pocketPCC. Our office runs a little bit different from the traditional practice so sometimes we’re out at home visits, the doctor’s out of the office, we work remotely sometimes. So being able to access our patient’s schedules and vaccine records, to be able to answer their questions while we’re out of the office has been great. Also, I would say the Appointment Book is something that’s been really great - easy to schedule patients, easy to look up, see you know, what’s going on for the day.
And if their school needs a vaccine record they can print it off themselves and get it straight to them instead of, you know, the extra steps of calling us and waiting for us. And just being able to, you know, access if they have any questions their past visit, they’re able to go back and take a look at those notes and what Dr. Tanya recommended. So I think that’s been a huge benefit for our patients as well as us, ‘cuz it also cuts down on some of the phone calls that we’re getting in regards to those things and we’re able to spend more time with our patients while they’re in the office.
Well I have worked in other offices who used different EHR systems but none of them were pediatric-specific. Having a pediatric-specific EHR system is great. PCC’s comes with vaccine forecasting, so when patient’s parents are curious as to what they’re gonna be needing, you know, you can just log into the system and it’ll tell you what they’re due for, and what they will be upcoming. It’s equipped with the proper growth charts, so when babies come in, and children, and we’re plotting their growth from year to year, you know, it’s pediatric-specific, so it’s their growth chart and we can see how they’re growing and make sure that they’re growing properly.
A huge, huge benefit with PCC is having that support. Things always come up – their support is so wonderful. You know, when we have issues and we’re calling and they’re trying to trouble-shoot, even if it’s not [sic] nothing on their end but it has something to do with our internet servers, they try to help us and for the most part, they’re able to (laughing).
So, you know, and then you just form those relationships with them. ‘Cuz they are a smaller company, so you do know a lot of their staff by name and get the chance to talk with, you know, the same few people, you know, more than once. So they really get to know you, and you to know them.