Dr. DeStephens invites residents of Northcentral Florida to experience the best of conveniently located Internal Medicine as well as Preventative and Rehabilitative Cardiology. In addition, Dr. DeStephens as a member of the American Academy of Anti-Aging, can show you a comprehensive approach to turning back your biological clock. As one of Gainesville’s most experienced Internal Medicine specialists, Dr. DeStephens will be able to take care of 95% of your likely medical needs himself. This is contrasted to what is increasingly found in most offices where the patient rarely sees the physician and instead sees a physician assistant or nurse practitioner. If you wish him to, he can apply his over 30 years experience in hospital work to make sure that you get exactly what you need while minimizing excessive costs including challenging questionable suggestions for invasive procedures or surgeries to make sure that you aren’t talked into doing something that just doesn’t make any sense. Its sort of like having one of the best doctors in your own family who won’t allow anything to be done to you by a specialist or hospital unless it passes his well developed ‘sniff’ test. Just as he did on his popular radio show “The Dynamic Fitness Hour” at 97.3 FM The Sky for seven years he will continue to use his many years of experience to call it like he sees it. And this would be whether it is for traditionally recommended “state of the art” evaluations or for when on occasion the “state of the art” just doesn’t offer a satisfactory answer. And upon that, potholes abound. Dr. DeStephens has travelled down that road many times and knows where the potholes are most likely hiding.
Assisting Dr. DeStephens in your efficient health care, our office maintains all of his patient records on a constantly evolving state of the art Electronic Medical Record System (EMR) that allows you to have easy access to your own records through a convenient Patient Portal on the internet. He also maintains an extensive library of top notch up to date Medical References in computer format that allows him to quickly see what the best evaluation and treatment options might be for uncommon problems as well. This capability allows you to avoid the inconvenience of being too quickly referred to a subspecialist that has to get to know you from scratch. However, if such a referral is necessary, comprehensive summaries of your history can be quickly sent to the specialist to get him/her up to speed on your case quickly. This helps to make sure that they aren’t missing anything to help them both properly diagnose and then to recommend the best treatment options that Dr. DeStephens, if he agrees can then recommend to you. Such an advanced Electronic Medical Record system also allows for any medications that are prescribed to be cross referenced with your other medications and even your various diagnoses to make sure that there are no significant conflicts. Until about three years ago, this capability was not possible in the medical office for the incalculable potential conflicts that exist out there for which no physician can on their own be able to keep track. But now with the help of a top notch EMR, we can. For those questions that are not considered to be urgent, our EMR possesses an advanced email correspondence tracking system where you can send us important communications directly from your Patient Portal provided that you have access to the internet. All of your records are available through your Patient Portal to be looked at or if necessary downloaded onto your own computer whichever suits you best. In our office, the day of the old and tremendously inefficient paper charts are over. We now have quick and easy access to all of your records both new and old and don’t have to waste time rummaging through an inevitably disjointed paper filing system as a consequence of the tremendous inefficiencies found in traditional paper charts. Consequently records lost due to inevitable misfiles are a thing of the past.
Doctors will frequently attempt to keep an evolving “Problem List” of all the significant issues that their patients have had before. And yet with a traditional paper system it quickly becomes unmanageable because inevitably the history of these various issues expands and the paper list cannot be efficiently expanded so that the Problem List which is supposed to be a quick summary of all of your critical issues is eventually abandoned. With an advanced EMR there is a note field attached to each major area in the patient’s history and physical exam. Such a note field is also found in a traditional Problem List within the EMR. But now since these problem lists, like all note fields, are in a word processor format they can be easily updated and expanded to include as much detail as necessary to function as a comprehensive historical review of all your significant ongoing issues. When Dr. DeStephens first opens up your EMR he goes first to the “Problem List, Expanded” that he has created for a quick summary of the essential health care issues that he wants to be quickly reminded about. If he needs to refer you to a specialist this summary provides all the essential information for that specialist to get him/her quickly up to speed on your case. He provides them exactly what he would like to have himself if he were sent a referral from a colleague along with copies of any relevant labs or consultations. And this summary is also available for you to see at your leisure on your “Patient Portal”. If you identify any errors in your record, it is easy to just shoot over a message right through your portal. This then appears in a special cue that is reviewed by staff on a daily basis.
Importantly, Dr. DeStephens has relationships with both of the hospitals in Gainesville so that when necessary he can refer you to wherever he thinks that your interests are best served as opposed to most other physicians who have effective contractual relationships with one hospital or another and are therefore limited to where they can refer. In addition, if Dr. DeStephens feels that the best options for you are outside of this community, he has connections with the best medical centers throughout the U.S. to make sure that you have the best of care if he feels that local resources are in any fashion inadequate for your situation.
If you would like to explore what Dr. DeStephens can do to help you, even if its only to look over both you and your records to provide for you a 2nd opinion, we will look forward to hearing from you. Just give the office a call and allow us to help unravel the mysteries that might be troubling you in order to become the best that you are committed to being.
Sincerely,
Dr. DeStephens and staff
