Intro: ​Riverside Healthcare puts the health and wellness information you need well within reach.

Liz Unruh (Host): Hello, listeners. And thank you for tuning into the Well Within Reach podcast brought to you by Riverside Healthcare. I'm your host, Liz Unruh. And joining me today is Phil Kambic, President and CEO of Riverside Healthcare. Thanks for joining us today, Phil.

Phil Kambic: Yeah, I absolutely.

Host: We're going to hear a quick message about myChart.

MyChart ad: Healthcare can be confusing, but thanks to your myRiverside myChart, you can easily manage not only your care, but your family's as well. With a single click your myRiverside myChart lets you stay well connected to the same information your provider sees. You can view your health history, get test results, request prescription refills, pay your bill, or make an appointment. Manage your care from anywhere, your laptop, phone, or tablet. Learn more and enroll today at riversidemychart.org.

Host: Phil, thanks for joining us. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Phil Kambic: Sure. I'm Phil Kambic. I'm president and CEO here at Riverside. I've been here for a long time. I've been CEO for about 20 years. born and raised in the community, and happy to be at Riverside. And I think we do a great job.

Host: Yeah. Our myChart ad is really appropriate here as we're going to be talking about what myChart is and some of the cool features that we have. So for those that might not know, can you tell us what myChart is?

Phil Kambic: Yeah. myChart is an app you can get on your phone, you can get on your desktop, and you can access your medical record. And you can look up lab work, x-rays, anything that's out their scheduled appointments, all sorts of different things that are just a convenience from a healthcare standpoint through myChart.

Host: Yeah, I think the thing that I love to do most is to be able to schedule the appointments in myChart. It makes it so easy and convenient. When I remember at 10:00 at night to schedule my kid's pediatrician appointment, I can do it right then.

Phil Kambic: Yeah, absolutely. It is amazing how easy and simple it is. I joke with people, I used to call one of the VPs and say, "Hey, I need this appointment," and they would make it happen for me. Today, I can get on myChart, I can do it all myself, and it actually works. So, very easy.

Host: Yeah, I think that's great. But myChart offers a lot more than just appointment scheduling. What are some of the cool features that patients may or may not know about that they could use that maybe you yourself use.

Phil Kambic: Yeah. You know, I get an annual physical every year. And I have lab work done. And so, I can go into myChart. Typically, I'll get it out in Bourbonnais, my lab work done. By the time I get to my office, so about a 20-minute drive I get inside, my lab work is typically there. And I can look at my lab work and see what it looks like. And then, I can take some of those, like cholesterol as an example and compare it to previous years. And it's really easy just clicking on a few buttons and then we'll trend it out for you.

Host: Yeah, that's really cool. So when you get to that annual visit, a lot of our offices have that pre-check in, so you can answer some of those pre-check in questions as well.

Phil Kambic: Oh, absolutely. When you go to the doctor, you can fill out their assessment form before you even get there. And then when you do arrive, they have all that information. You take a seat or they call you right back to the room for the physician.

Host: Yeah, I think that's great. I love the e check-in feature. It makes it just really speedy when you get to the office. I know that there's a new feature that we're rolling out this year. There's always new features when it comes to technology, myChart, but it's called ambient listening. Now, that's kind of like a big word and makes it sound like they're just always listening to you, but that's not the case, right?

Phil Kambic: No, not at all. This is really a great tool for the physician and for the patient. But there's always a lot of data entry whenever you go to the hospital, to the doctor, et cetera. What this does, it helps eliminate some of that manual data entry, some of that typing. So when you go in to see your physician now, many of them and most of the Riverside physicians will have this by the end of the year. You can go in, the physician's going to say, "Liz, I'm going to have a helper record our session. Would you mind if I turn on my tape recorder?" So, they're going to do that. And then, the doctor's going to look, be able to look at you, not at the computer screen. Talk to you, ask you about how you've been feeling, those sorts of things. And this ambient voice listening captures all of that and puts it into the computer for the doctor. The doctor will review it, say, "Yep, this is all good," and then can sign off on it. So by the time you leave, the doctor has all the documentation complete. If they order you another test or if they order you a medication, it fills that out for them. So, they just have to approve it and off it goes electronically to the pharmacy or to the laboratory or whoever. But really, a great convenience for the physician and a time-saver for the patient.

Host: And I'm sure doctors just see a lot of patients in the day. So, it helps them streamline what they're doing and make sure that they're not missing any important notes. I know that, Dr. Herrera, one of our pediatricians, he's been using it, and the notes are detailed but not too detailed where it's like, "Oh my gosh, they're repeating everything I say," but it helps me remember what happened.

Phil Kambic: Absolutely. And again, this technology is so smart. If I say, "Hey, Liz, you like the Cubs? Did you see that Cubs game last night?" It excludes that from the note. It knows that that was not a medical type of question and will exclude it. So, it's really fascinating how smart this has gotten.

Host: Yeah, for sure. We often hear that convenience is king. So, how has myChart helped make care more accessible to the community? I know we first touched on scheduling, but are there other things?

Phil Kambic: Oh, absolutely. Again, if you go to one doctor and then they refer you on to a specialist. That specialist can see those same notes and see what your primary care physician had ordered and had put in there and has your whole history. So, it just makes it much easier for the patient if you have to go to multiple physicians. They don't have to call each other. They have it all right there on the computer. So, a huge convenience from that standpoint. As you are taking a look at, as you said, the consents can be signed online, all of this stuff can be used. So, your visit is much simpler, much easier once you get to the doctor's office.

Host: Yeah, I know sometimes doctor's office are very stressful or it might give you anxiety, so it's nice to be able to take some of that away by doing it beforehand. So, you're not worried about reading consents or that, but you can always sign those when you get there if you don't want to use the e-check-in as well.

Phil Kambic: Yep.

Host: We're going to take a short break to talk about primary care.

Consistency is being able to count on someone to be there when you need them. At Riverside Healthcare, your primary care provider is dedicated to being in your corner and helping you and your family stay healthy and thrive. Find the right primary care provider for you at myrhc.net/acceptingnew. From annual screenings to well checks and everything in between, having a primary care provider that you can trust makes all the difference.

And we're back. So, Riverside has been a long time supporter of myChart, and the backend is Epic. Epic is the company that puts out myChart, the forward-facing thing. Can you talk about why investing in Epic was so important to Riverside?

Phil Kambic: Yeah. You know, as information technology just continues to get better, Epic is the leader in the healthcare community. Epic is in almost all the major medical centers, academic medical centers, and it's in a lot of the suburban community hospitals. So, a great thing is if you're at Riverside and you're vacationing out in California and something happens, you have to go to a hospital out there, they could actually, access your records. At Riverside if you give 'em permission to do that. And so again, just from incredible convenience standpoint, from an emergency standpoint to every day, if you're going up to Chicago to an academic medical center, you can link your accounts together and they can see it.

Liz Unruh (Host): I think that's, a really great thing. I know that like the specialists, sometimes there might not be a specialist that we have in town, so it's nice to be able for them to see the records here. If you have to go up to Chicago to one of those academic centers,

Phil Kambic: right.

Liz Unruh (Host): From a leadership perspective, how do you think tools like MyChart support the long-term goals around, you know, patient engagement and system efficiency?

Phil Kambic: Yeah, absolutely It's interesting. We want to take care of people from the time they're born, right? 'cause we deliver babies, through their pediatrics, through their adult life. And again, with MyChart, we can have your whole record in one place. there is so much data and information in your medical record.

And that should belong to you, not to the hospital, not to anybody else, not to the doctor. And so MyChart allows us to give that information to the patient and let them really be in control of it. So again, just those sorts of things to make it convenient, easy for the patient to always access their history. Sometimes I gotta go back and figure out, "Okay, when did I get this vaccine?" or "When did I have this test done?" In myChart, it's so simple. You can go back in time and see all of that information, 'cause it's easily located in one place.

Host: Yeah, I think that's one of the coolest things. Before I worked in healthcare, I didn't really think about like tracking vaccines or anything, but that's one of the things that schools always ask for or some employers ask for it to make sure that you're going to be safe on the job.

So, I think that's just a really-- vaccines especially-- is a really interesting thing to be able to track all the way back to when you were born. Knowing that. Technology always changes, are there any innovations or new capabilities coming soon to myChart that you are particularly excited about?

Phil Kambic: Yeah. One of the things that I'm really excited about, we have a large Spanish-speaking population in Kankakee County. Right now, myChart is only in English. And so we've been working for the past year to really make it available in Spanish as well. So very shortly, hopefully within the next month or so, we will have a Spanish myChart. So, our patients who are Spanish-speaking can get into the system and see the same sort of information that our English-speaking patients can. I think that will really be a help for the community and for a lot of patients out there.

Host: I think the Spanish-speaking myChart is going to be a huge, huge thing in our community for the people that that is going to impact. Also, you know, looking ahead, how do you see myChart evolving in the next few years, and what kind of role do you see it playing in the future of healthcare?

Phil Kambic: Yeah. I think it's going to be even easier to use in the future. Right now, about 65% of our patients use myChart. I think that number is going to go up to 80-85%. And you can also, if you have an aging parent as a child, you can also get permission to access their accounts. And so, we're just going to see more and more of that. So, I think soon everybody that used as a hospital is going to have a myChart account. Actually, we even sign a myChart account right when you're born, when babies are in the hospital, right? So, parents can have access to that information. But I think it's just going to get more and more popular with anybody that uses healthcare at all. And it's just a convenience and a safety factor, as we go into the future. So, I just see it becoming easier to use and more prevalent out there.

Host: I think that's really big. You know, as the new babies are being born, we're setting them with a myChart. So, they're starting with it from the beginning. I think that's really is the future. Well, thank you Phil, for joining us today. Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Phil Kambic: If you don't have a myChart account, go out and get one. It's very easy to do. If you need help, we have people at the hospital that can help you do that as well. But it's definitely worthwhile to do, just so you have access to your own medical record. That's what you deserve.

Host: Yes. Well, thank you for joining us. And thank you, listeners, for tuning into the Well Within Reach podcast brought to you by Riverside Healthcare. To learn more about myRiverside myChart, visit riverside healthcare.org.