Premier Primary Care Takes a Proactive Approach to the Business of Healthcare

Premier Primary Care of Paducah, Kentucky was founded in December 2014 by Drs. Lee Meals and Rheneal Tolar. Each physician has over a decade of experience as a board-certified internal medicine physician.

In addition to providing patient care to clients locally, Drs. Meals and Tolar conduct impairment ratings for individuals nationwide who are protected by the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act (EEOICPA). The work they provide under the EEOICPA helps eligible Department of Energy nuclear weapons workers obtain impairment ratings required to receive compensation to treat debilitating health conditions resulting from work conducted as contractors or subcontractors to the United States Department of Energy.

Lastly, Dr. Meals is an affiliate of MDVIP, a personalized healthcare program that empowers individuals to reach their health and wellness goals through in-depth knowledge, expertise and one-on-one coaching. Patients enrolled in this program receive a holistic, proactive approach to healthcare. Unlike the traditional healthcare model where patients’ ailments are treated once a problem arises, Dr. Meals’ patients are cared for in accordance to their own tailored, comprehensive wellness plan.  These plans proactively address each patient’s unique physical, emotional, and mental healthcare needs in an effort towards improving the overall quality of health and preventing health problems from occurring. This personalized wellness model provides patients with greater access to their physician improving the patient-doctor relationship.

Anytime, anywhere access to patients near and far not only requires a proactive approach to healthcare, but it requires a proactive approach to the business of healthcare as well.

Kalleo Technologies provides the high-tech tools required for this high-touch practice.

The Challenge:

Drs. Meals and Tolar were progressive in the conversion from paper charts to electronic charting. In fact, Dr. Tolar has never kept a paper chart for a client in her ten years practicing medicine. “The hospital where I completed my residency used paper charts. It was terrible. I would never run a practice using anything other than electronic records,” explains Dr. Tolar.  “Our use of electronic medical records ensures there is no documentation loss and patient information is captured efficiently. As doctors, we are reliant upon a stable system that is always ready to work when we are. Our patients have become reliant upon the information contained in that system as well. They have come to depend on electronic health information exchange that keep their records up to date.  We would be paralyzed if our system failed. Our systems must be reliable.”

Dr. Meals agrees. “Technology is an essential tool to our business. If we are going to tell our patients they have remote access to us, we must be certain that our technology has a level of sophistication that allows us to fully serve them. This means secure access to patient records, access to our business phone and incoming faxes regardless of the time of day or where we happen to be working at the time our patients call on us.”

The Solution:

With the help of Kalleo, Premier Primary Care has built a network that is reliable and compliant. The physicians have secure, remote access to their EMR where they are able to access and update patient information any time and from anywhere.  Incoming faxes are converted digitally at the server and imported into the system so that supporting patient documentation is available in a timely fashion. The practice also leverages a VOIP telephony system which provides the physicians with the mobile flexibility they require in order to access the business telephone system without being tied to the office.

Kalleo shares Premier Primary Care’s passion for prevention. Rather than waiting for problems to occur, Kalleo monitors and manages Premier Primary Care’s network infrastructure with preventive maintenance in mind so that outages are minimized by catching problems and fixing them before they become serious issues resulting in serious downtime.  Help desk support is provided day or night for computer problems that cannot be prevented.

The Results:

“You get what you pay for,” says Dr. Meals.  “Kalleo is extremely efficient. I call it ‘concierge computer service’. If we have a problem, Kalleo is immediately aware and they get right to work to resolve the issue.  Kalleo is so efficient that sometimes problems are repaired before we even know we have an issue. Our approach to medicine is special. Kalleo helps us provide that by improving our access to patients and eliminating the barriers associated to the old way of providing healthcare.”