Watch: Symplast Customer Video Spotlight

How has Symplast impacted your ability to provide clinical care?

Symplast has been transformational for me and my practice. And probably the number one, two, and three feature has been 24/7 anywhere access to my patient’s records. In terms of looking into a pre-op patient, a post-op patient ,planning surgery, checking up on someone after surgery, trying to remember a patient that I saw with a certain type of procedure awhile ago and planning procedure, and I want to look at their op report. We’ve been in practice over 30 years and we never had electronic health records. And when we first got involved with Symplast I believe was about five years ago. I mean the easiest thing in the beginning was that we used to do all this paper transcription of notes and now we’ve really gotten a lot away from paper. We still have some charts, but we’re trying to get rid of them, but we’re going to much more electronic. And the whole point that everyone can access everyone, anyone you want can access it wherever they are, whenever they are, and through their phone, essentially, which is I would say that that’s the biggest selling point.

Is Symplast a true mobile platform?
I believe it is a true mobile platform. I’m not sure what a not really completely mobile, but my understanding is it’s complete. It is truly mobile. Yes.

How has Symplast helped your day-to-day workflows?
Well, I always look at the schedule. I look to see what I have, what’s coming up during the day and start thinking about which patients I’m going to see and try to plan out my day, my hours with what’s going on. And then if there’s a surgical case coming up to just review that review photos. Yes, so I think it’s, you know, not necessary lugging lugging, you know, lugging as many charts around and traveling a lot lighter. And yeah, I think that that’s probably major.

What would you tell other practices thinking about making the change to Symplast?
What would I tell people? I would tell people that it’s created by a plastic surgeon. So it’s definitely something that you can relate to, something that I do. They’re responsive. They have a good tech support. We are we’re beta testers, and so we I mean, they’re literally it seems like every month or less or more there’s a new update happening. So it’s it’s a constant process of evolution trying to get better and better, nd I certainly appreciate that. I understand that there are bugs that happen along the way and we’ve encountered some and usually they’re fixable. The support people are pretty responsive about getting that fixed. And yeah, so I think that that’s it’s great I think it’s a great EHR.

What have your patients said about the Symplast patient app?
First of all, I would tell you that that’s almost universally something that people talk about. They talk about it in their reviews, having instant access to the doctor 24/7 which makes me feel much better because I can talk to them before I find out the problem the next day in the office. So we talked about this a little bit, but it has to do with their facility, with, you know, with electronic communication, cell phone, etc. So sometimes you have either an older patient or a patient that’s not that familiar with the phone or they don’t want to use the phone, but as long as they have want to use the phone, which is the majority of people that can’t get the phone out of their face, I mean, the truth is that you can use regular text message, but it’s not HIPPA secure, HIPPA compliant as you state. So I always check on patients post-op and they always get back to me.

What is your favorite Symplast tool?
The secure messaging feature is universally a great aspect. And then for that matter, another thing that’s very convenient – we never had electronic prescription before. I know a lot of offices even without mobile EHR have gone to that. Some have been mandated like Medicare, etc. and I don’t write them any prescriptions but the basic ones that I write for surgery, it’s so simple. I use the dose ER the dose RX the dose spot which is the ERX that you guys have worked with. So I mean I just did that today for a patient, I was doing surgery and the patient needed something rather than waiting on the phone to talk to the pharmacist, just plug it in and send it in. It’s great. So patients really appreciate that. I appreciate that for the convenience.

How has Symplast impacted your work-life balance?
I’m not retired yet, but it’s it got me to retire sooner. I would really like it. No, it’s really it’s good because I mean, I literally would sometimes run to the office. We’re very close to our office to check something out, to look at a chart, look something up, and I can do it from anywhere.
Yes, we were on vacation in California. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but we ended up seeing a few patients post-op over the phone. My staff was here, so we were able to check up on some patients and definitely having access 24/7 and wherever you are, has been it’s definitely makes it you don’t want to interfere with your life, but if the work part is less tedious.
It makes it better. It’s a good balance.