- Hello. My name is Heidi Signore,
and I'm the director of our Primary Care division.
I'd like to share with you the story
of our evolution into a Primary Care division.
For those of you new to Coordinated Health,
this evolution has been many years in the making.
As we've grown over the past decade,
the need to develop the services we offer
to our patients has grown.
Like everything else we do,
the patient experience is always the central theme
in developing these services.
We ask ourselves, "How can we better meet the needs
"of our patients?"
and "How can we better serve our communities?"
In 2005, with those questions in mind,
we identified a need for a dedicated department
to handle the volume of worker's compensation claims,
drug screens, and work-related physical exams.
This program was strictly occupational medicine
and the employer health services.
We called it Work Cares.
In 2007, after seeing patient volume
and service needs grow,
Care on Call was introduced to all surgical patients.
Care on Call was essentially a hotline
patients could call 24/7 with post-operative
concerns or questions.
The introduction of Care on Call Hotline
allowed us to more effectively use our staff
at the Coordinated Health Hospital in Bethlehem,
and offer our surgical patients a better patient experience.
Calls to the hotline were answered at night
by our hospital nurses and our nighttime physicians.
Patients were able to call the hotline
with questions or concerns,
and if a patient required immediate attention,
they were directed to come to our hospital
for an evaluation.
In 2008, we decided to hire
our first primary care physicians.
Why?
Well, at this point in our evolution,
we felt that staffing Work Cares
with primary care physicians would allow us to expand
the depths of services we offered
to our existing patients,
as well as our new patients.
Now, not only could patients see a Work Cares physician
for worker's compensation or work physicals,
but they could also establish themselves
with a Coordinated Health primary care physician.
Primary Care Services allowed us the ability
to establish a greater continuum of patient care,
and further integrate all CH specialities
and services.
The new Work Cares physicians also transitioned
to taking care of all of our hospital inpatients.
Around this time, I took over the Work Cares department.
It quickly became apparent to us
that having the Work Cares physicians
at our campus on Schoenersville Road,
and our hospital patients at our campus on Highland Avenue
was not an ideal situation for the patients
and the physicians.
After all, you can't adequately monitor patients
in a hospital when your physicians
are on a different campus.
As a result, we moved the Work Cares department
to our hospital campus on Highland Avenue in Bethlehem.
A couple of things happened to expand
the Work Cares department after the move
to our Bethlehem hospital campus.
First, more primary care physicians were hired
to staff additional Work Cares locations
in East Stroudsburg and our hospital campus in Allentown.
Second, all Work Cares physicians began developing
a primary care practice.
And third, we merged the Care on Call hotline
with Work Cares.
Now all our patients, not just surgical,
can access the hotline,
and all our employers can send their injured workers, 24/7,
to our Care on Call locations.
In 2010, we decided to eliminate the confusion
of using two different names, Work Cares and Care on Call
to describe the same department, physicians, and services.
We chose to use the Care on Call,
because we needed a name that would,
first, appeal to Primary Care patients
and help them better identify the types of services
they were receiving.
A patient with hypertension
going to Work Cares for treatment,
it just doesn't make sense.
Second, appeal to our contracted employers.
And third, be marketable to all of our patients
and let them know about our primary care
and our after hours program.
Of course, as Coordinated Health's growth continued,
so did our need to expand the services
we offered to patients.
So in early 2011, we decided to eliminate the barrier
of call in and appointment access only
to these physicians and services,
and offer the patients the ability to simply
walk in and receive care.
We wanted to use a recognizable name,
so patients would instantly recognize the new level
of service we were offering,
and distinguish us from all other walk-in facilities.
And of course, we had to make it about the patients.
We live in an accessible world,
where information, services, and entertainment
are all available at a moment's notice,
whenever we want them.
So why not health care too?
What could be more about our patients
than an on demand health care service?
So our Care on Demand service was born.
So now you understand how our Primary Care division
came into existence.
Well, what is its purpose now?
Well, our Primary Care division
has four distinct types of services,
all of which have a unique effect on our patient experience.
The first is Primary Care service.
This is our continuity patients.
These are patients with chronic medical conditions
that are followed closely by our Primary Care Physicians.
Of course, we have our Care on Demand service.
This is the patients that need us immediately.
They need us for sick visits or an injury.
They can walk in and receive care
without an appointment at any four of our
Care on Demand facilities.
Care on Call is now our hotline
that is able to help us serve our Care on Demand patients.
Patients can call in and speak to a doctor
24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The third is our worker's compensation
and employer health services.
This is the foundation of our Primary Care division.
We currently take care of over 1,200 regional employers,
treating sick visits, physicals, vaccinations,
testing and lab work.
And the last component is our hospital inpatient care
for all of our inpatients
at both our Allentown and Bethlehem hospital.
Coordinated Health surgeons and our Primary Care physicians,
they work hand in hand to monitor and manage
the medical conditions of patients
while they're under our care,
recovering from their surgeries.
As a Coordinated Health employee,
you already know all the great benefits
of the Care on Demand service.
Quick access, and extended hours.
Care on Demand service is available to you,
your family members, your friends,
and most importantly, our patients.
As you interact with our patients every day,
please remember to tell them about
the Care on Demand services.
It's a service that everyone can benefit from.
Let's meet our Primary Care physicians.
- Hi, I'm Doctor Ryan Smith,
I'm a Primary Care physician at Coordinated Health.
I practice primary care medicine
here at our Highland Avenue facility.
I specifically chose a career in family medicine,
again because I like the challenge of taking care of
a wide breadth of patient problems.
I enjoy seeing patients at the entry point
into the health care system.
I also have the opportunity to take care of patients
from a lot of our local employers
that we take care of
and provide occupational health services for,
and lastly I'm able to work in the inpatient setting,
and as a hospitalist and take care of
hospitalizated patients who have just had surgery.
So it's a really unique career experience for me.
I'm originally from the town of Bangor
here in the Lehigh Valley,
and I take great pride in taking care of
and treating patients from the area from which I came.
- Hi, I'm Barry Sirard,
I'm a primary care sports medicine doctor.
I see everything from sports injuries to urgent care
to family medicine.
I got into family medicine inadvertently.
I thought I wanted to do something else
and found family medicine and really enjoyed that,
and then ultimately found sports medicine,
which is my love.
I started swimming when I was four years old
and swam competitively all the way until 18.
When I was about 15, I started doing triathlons
and I raced on the national team,
and competed in two world championships.
Later, when I was in my late twenties
I started racing professionally.
While I am a primary care sports medicine doctor,
part of being that type of doctor
is primary care, which means family medicine,
and having five children and a wife,
I've had lots of practice with my family.
I've just recently become one of the team physicians
for Lehigh University.
For the fall season,
I'll be covering men's and women's soccer,
and in the spring season
I'll be covering men's and women's lacrosse.
- Hi, I'm Seth Burkey,
and I'm one of the Care on Demand physicians
working at Coordinated Health.
I currently work in the East Stroudsburg
and Brodheadsville offices.
I grew up playing all types and kinds of sports,
and wanted to be around the young athlete,
the type of patients that want
to get better if they're hurt.
Here in the East Stroudsburg office,
we see a variety of patients for
a variety of illnesses and disease processes
and injuries as well.
A lot of these patients may not have the time
or the resources to go somewhere else
and they like coming to Coordinated Health,
they're able to get in right away, same day,
and be seen by a physician,
so we do see a variety of injuries,
and serious injuries.
I really feel as though our new
Care on Demand walk-in facility across the street
will be of value to the patients in this area.
They'll be able to be provided rapid care
in a timely manner and it's a facility
with doctors and extenders that will
be able to provide great care for all types
of illnesses and injuries.
- My name is Doctor Zlotnick, better known as Doctor Z,
Jeffery A. Zlotnick, MD, CAQ, FAAFP,
lots of initials after the name.
I am in family practice sports medicine
with Coordinated Health.
I am at the Lehighton office.
I am also at Allentown, Bethlehem Emrick Boulevard,
and Phillipsburg.
So you'd like to know how I got into this.
It sort of goes back, I hate to say this,
to third grade.
My handwriting was so bad, she actually looked at it, says,
"You're going to be a doctor,"
and it just sorted of planted the idea in my head.
I got into family medicine because I was
in medical school in New Jersey Med in Newark.
I was looking at various rotations,
and a friend of mine put me wise
to this radical idea called family practice,
where you treat the person.
It's not just the disease that you're treating,
you're treating the whole person,
and the bug was planted at that point.
I knew what I wanted to do.
And the other question, what got me into sports medicine?
Well, I'll give you guys a very good safety tip.
Do not try to learn how to ski in your thirties.
A pretty bad ski accident, I tore my knee apart
when I was in medical school
and ended up getting surgery on it.
I started working on that with rehab,
and it got me an interest in doing this sort
of approach to sports medicine.
So, very much fell in love with
that approach to medicine, and I haven't looked back since.
- My name is Doctor Art Hoffman MD.
I've been in Allentown for the last thirty some years.
I'm now at the Coordinated Health campus in Allentown,
practicing internal medicine.
Glad to be here and glad to be seeing my patients
that I've accumulated over the last thirty years
as well as new patients who are looking
for an internist to care for them.
I take care of routine problems as well as complex problems.
I see patients in my office.
I also have a hospital practice
and in addition see patients as a hospitalist
at the Coordinated Health location at Cedar Crest Boulevard
in Allentown.
I chose internal medicine because I enjoyed taking care
of the whole patient.
I enjoy taking care of adults,
and I like being a diagnostician
as well as taking care of complex medical problems.
I think that that's what medicine's about,
is helping people and advocating for people
and that we do work for the patient,
even though we have all these other things
that are distracting us in medicine.
We ultimately work for the patient.
- My name is Dale Bautista,
I see patients here at Allentown
in the Primary Care division.
I do hospitalist-type work, inpatient;
I see patients at our Care on Demand division
which includes seeing patients
for any type of injuries
whether it be sports, musculoskeletal,
urgent care type stuff.
I also do a lot of employer health.
One of my strengths with what I feel
is in my patient care is communication.
Not everyone's a medical professional.
Not everyone knows terminology,
and I tend to simplify things,
and I take extra time to sort of educate the person
on what their disability is and how we can get it better.
I think that is part of the practice
and part of the fear of patients is that
they don't want a physician who is going to tell them
exactly what has to be done in a language
that they don't really understand.
And so, when you come into my office
or any of the offices here,
you'll sort of get that sense, that okay,
these guys, they know what they're doing
and they know how to tell me what needs to be done.
In addition to that, the patient experience
here at Coordinated Health, it's almost one-stop shopping.
Patients like to know that their care is being done
in a timely manner.
When they are waiting on a study,
they don't want to wait six weeks
before they find out what's wrong with them.
People like to know what's wrong
and how fast they can get better.
That's one of the things that we,
That our strengths are.
That's one of our strengths here at Coordinated Health,
is just that our urgency of care
is top-notch, and we get people better fast.