Make Pain a Thing of the Past – patient care champion – Physician Partners of America

Tag Archive for: patient care champion

PPOA Patient Care Champions – Marlene Chinchilla

MARLENE CHINCHILLA – PATIENT EXPERIENCE COORDINATOR TEAM LEAD, TAMPA

Our employees are all patient care champions, but some go the extra mile and we want to give them the recognition they deserve. They embody the PPOA values known as S.I.T.E. – Safety, Integrity, Teamwork, Empathy – which informs our service to patients and the community through high quality health care. 

Marlene Chinchilla may not be the one who holds your hand at the doctor’s office; she’s the one who does it virtually, over the phone. She’s the comforting voice on the phone, the one who checks out your insurance, the one who patiently answers your questions about procedures; the one who calls every patient “honey.”

People like her, known as patient experience coordinators, are essential to a healthcare practice, and they have one of the most difficult jobs – plural.

At any given time, you will see Chinchilla working two or three phones and two computer screens, a trainee perched by her side. She juggles the calls effortlessly, pointing out what she’s doing to the newcomer. On one line is a patient who needs to reschedule a laser spine procedure; on another, someone who isn’t clear what his insurance covers; on the third is a doctor who wants to make a referral to one of PPOA’s 40-plus pain management specialists.

It’s a stressful, fastball environment that would break some people, but Chinchilla takes it all in stride. “I’m a natural multi-tasker” she says.

While her skills may come naturally, they were honed in a radically different first career. A native of Miami, Chinchilla earned her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in social work at Miami Gardens’s St. Thomas University and pursued a career in social services.

She worked at the Florida Department of Children and Families in various positions: case manager for drug-dependent clients, hospice services, and therapist for some of the state’s most troubled youth at G4S in Avon Park.

“Working in social services made me realize how precious life is. These kids – things happened to them that were not their fault, usually involving a parent’s drug use,” she says. “Sadly, many of these kids would do something to wind up back in jail as soon as they got out.”

After being attacked in a riot she hit the reset button in her life and made the career switch into medicine. “I was a single mom of two kids,” she says. Chinchilla became a receptionist at a medical group in Sebring, Fla., working her way up to insurance verification and records management.

She and her two children have always been extremely close; so when her son Nicholas Gillespie got into the National Aviation Academy in Tampa, she didn’t hesitate to look for work nearby.

Chinchilla started at PPOA’s Tampa headquarters in 2015. Her daughter, Yessenia Sanchez, also works as a PPOA patient care coordinator, while Nicholas works for Boeing in aircraft maintenance in Jacksonville, Fla.

With her children settled, Marlene Chinchilla can devote more time with her work family. As team lead, she keeps track of her fellow representatives’ patient interactions: the team of 12 to 15 handles up to 1,500 calls a day.

Chinchilla always tries to foster a cohesive, affirmative spirit. “I try to be positive and make sure we work together as a team,” she says. “And I always try to thank everyone at the end of the workday.”

The toughness and empathy she developed as a social worker helps her deal not only with her coworkers in a stressful environment, but with the unique needs of chronic pain patients.

“I just go with the flow,” she says. “At the end of the day, it’s all about the patients. I try to make them feel better.”

 

/by

PPOA Patient Care Champions – Jennifer Vivar

JENNIFER VIVAR – LEAD MEDICAL ASSISTANT, MCKINNEY, TEXAS

Our employees are all patient care champions, but some go the extra mile and we want to give them the recognition they deserve. They embody the PPOA values known as S.I.T.E. – Safety, Integrity, Teamwork, Empathy – which informs our service to patients and the community through high quality health care. 

Sometimes people find the medical profession by chance; others just seem born to do it. Jennifer Vivar, lead medical assistant based in the PPOA McKinney, Texas, clinic, falls into that category.

“I love helping people. It’s a gift I have. I put others before myself,” she says. “I’m very, very kindhearted.”

You’d be hard-pressed to find a single person who would disagree with her self-assessment.

“She’s very engaged in providing exceptional patient experiences for the patients in McKinney,” says her regional supervisor, Rhonda Boysen.

Born in Dallas and raised in the small town of Little Elm, Texas, Vivar was the first among her siblings to graduate from high school. She immediately enrolled in PCI Health Training Center and earned her Certified Medical Assistant certificate in 2015. She did her externship at PPOA in its now-defunct Prosper office and was hired full-time.

After working at a few PPOA clinics she came to McKinney in 2016.  Recently promoted to lead medical assistant, she now trains new hires for the role, but the McKinney clinic is her home base.

“Jennifer is always a team player and has a strong desire to grow her career path,” says her supervisor, Rhonda Boysen. “She has the respect of her teammates and they have wonderful collaboration amongst their team.”

“The clinic is our secondary home – actually more like our primary home because we spend more time here than anywhere else,” Jennifer Vivar laughs. “We get along so well. Patients see that and it makes them more comfortable.”

The patients – she always comes back to the patients.

“As a medical assistant you really do bond with patients,” she says. “They become like family because you see them every month and they tell you about their lives. Most important, you want them to be comfortable.”

 

 

/by

PPOA Patient Care Champions – Khiva Rogers

KHIVA ROGERS – PRACTICE MANAGER, DESOTO, TEXAS

Our employees are all patient care champions, but some go the extra mile and we want to give them the recognition they deserve. They embody the PPOA values known as S.I.T.E. – Safety, Integrity, Teamwork, Empathy – which informs our service to patients and the community through high quality health care. 

If there is one thing Khiva Rogers has learned at the PPOA Desoto, Texas clinic she manages it’s that patients deserve compassion and respect – no matter how challenging they might be. And it’s something she instills in her staff.

“People in pain are not their normal selves. They’re hurting,” she says. “I treat them like I’d want my grandparents to be treated.”

That attitude comes easily to this mother of three grown sons and grandmother of four.

“My mother was a private duty nurse. She helped her patients and her patients fell in love with her,” Rogers recalls. “She always did above what was expected. I followed her into medicine and I try to follow her example every day.”

Rogers is known to keep a bucket of frozen water bottles outside the entrance for patients to sip on during scorching Texas summers. Her regional manager, Terica Cox, recalls one incident that typifies Rogers’s heart for patient care.

“One time there was a patient who was not acting normal; he was disoriented,” Cox recalls. “We checked on him. Khiva sat with him and took him into a room. She asked him, ‘Have you eaten today?’ ‘No.’ ‘Are you diabetic?’ ‘Yes.’ She went to the kitchen and gave this man her lunch. That’s outstanding.”

A native of Dallas, Rogers joined the U.S. Army after high school, which took her around the world. Her job: mortuary assistant in South Korea. It was her duty to identify the remains of fallen soldiers – a task both grisly and honorable. Still, the universe kept coaxing her into her mother’s footsteps.

Being stationed separately from her husband, Randall, a fellow soldier, was also difficult, especially as their family grew. They returned to the States, and Khiva Rogers enrolled in Lakeland Medical Academy (now Herzing University) in Minneapolis, Minn. She earned her medical assistant certificate and worked at the University of Minnesota’s hospital neurology department.

After five years, the family moved back to Dallas, where Rogers earned an A.S. in Science at Richland College and went to work as the office manager at the Ashland Ambulatory Surgery Center at the University of Texas.

She came to PPOA in 2016, first in the North Dallas clinic, moving into her current role in 2018. In addition to providing compassionate care, Rogers also believes in educating patients.

“I try to inform them at all levels; not only about their condition but about navigating paperwork,” she says. “What a deductible is, what a prior authorization is. It’s not easy for someone in the profession to understand it, so how can we expect patients to get it? I will pull them to the side and explain it. I’ll even write it down if they need it.”

Her willingness to go the extra mile ever day in her job makes Khiva Rogers a PPOA Patient Care Champion.

/by

PPOA Patient Care Champions – Eric Shelton

,

ERIC SHELTON – PHYSICIAN’S ASSISTANT, TAMPA

Our employees are all patient care champions, but some go the extra mile and we want to give them the recognition they deserve. They embody the PPOA values known as S.I.T.E. – Safety, Integrity, Teamwork, Empathy – which informs our service to patients and the community through high quality health care. 

As a physician’s assistant in PPOA’s busiest Florida pain clinic  – Habana Avenue-Tampa – Eric Shelton, PA-C is known for his medical acumen and kindness to patients. Both are qualities he honed at a young age. He was only two when he was diagnosed with type I diabetes – and spent a lot of time in doctors’ offices.

“As I got older, I was able to recognize what a pleasant office visit was versus being passed through like a number,” he says. “Having such an experience helped me to see healthcare from a patient’s point of view. I developed the desire to help others within the healthcare field.”

A native of Johnson City, Tenn., he and his family moved to Lakeland, Fla. when Shelton was seven. After graduating from George Jenkins High School and Polk State College, he earned a Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Science from the University of South Florida in Tampa.

After working as a biomedical engineering tech for a medical device company, he realized his calling was patient care – the type he had received. But he faced an obstacle getting into PA school:

“The requirements were very stringent. They wanted 1,000 to 2,000 hours of direct patient care just to apply. My wife, Beatriz, picked up a second job so I could work as a medical assistant for free,” he recalls. “I worked 10-hour days nonstop, weekends included, with no pay. My wife picked up that full responsibility, which was very challenging.”

Eventually, Eric Shelton earned a Masters in Physician’s Assistant Studies at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, NY. He came to PPOA in April 2017 after working in orthopedics and neurosurgery. “I was taught to do several procedures that we do here and got to do them myself, so I have knowledge of what the process is before and after and what the expectations are,” he says.

“He has really taken his time to learn the company and to share his wealth of knowledge with other staff members, including myself, in order to make PPOA-Habana a ‘Clinic of Excellence,'” says regional supervisor Mary McKay.

If his experience as a patient and on-the-job training formed the foundation of his care philosophy, his education gave it focus.

“My medical training in PA school was Jesuit. They taught us to treat patients with a holistic approach. So you take all things into consideration,” he says. “You don’t go in closed-minded. You listen, you pay attention and you begin to put a treatment plan together.”

That dedication to patient care shines through, with patients giving him high marks on reputation and social media sites.

“I have personally seen the patients come to check out all smiles and raving about his bedside manner, how he always listens to their concerns and how they really feel cared for after a visit with him,” says McKay.

“Sometimes the longest part of the visit is just sitting and listening and hearing someone,” says Shelton. “But you gain so much information from just being attentive. The treatment plan just becomes more simplified. You give them time and attention, which sometimes they have not been able to receive. The heavier demands in the medical field continue to reduce the amount of time that providers have with their patients but it’s one of the key components that allow you to have a well-developed, well thought-out treatment plan.”

Beatriz Shelton is now completing her last semester in nursing school, and their son, Elijah, is about to turn three. With his career in interventional pain management in full swing, Eric Shelton plans to continue helping patients lead a pain-free life.

“I never want to stop learning,” he says. “The more I can learn, the better a provider I become.”

 

/by

PPOA Patient Care Champions – Terica Cox

,

TERICA COX – REGIONAL MANAGER, TEXAS

Our employees are all patient care champions, but some go the extra mile and we want to give them the recognition they deserve. They embody the PPOA values known as S.I.T.E. – Safety, Integrity, Teamwork, Empathy – which informs our service to patients and the community through high quality health care. 

Terica Cox manages her Texas clinical teams on one key principle: “I tell them that we are all one fall away from being a patient ourselves and we should treat patients the way we would want to be treated,” she says.

It comes in part from personal experience. A lifelong Dallas resident, Cox says her mother suffered a bout of sickness and had to have several emergency surgeries. “Healthcare intrigued me. I wanted to learn more about it and how I could help my mom in her time of need,” she says.

That led her to study at PCI Health Training Center in Dallas and become a certified medical assistant (CMA). She worked in a variety of specialties including occupational medicine, cardiology, labor and delivery, and internal medicine, before finding pain management.

“I love patient care. I love specialty, so anything that’s a specialty allows me to learn new things. I like to learn new things all the time,” she says.

She joined PPOA in November 2014, in a position that was then known as a clinical coordinator, in the Grapevine location, now closed. She was later promoted to practice manager of the North Dallas clinic, and assumed her regional manager position in 2016.

She now oversees practice managers in Carrollton, Desoto, Frisco, McKinney and Richardson, plus two Capstone Pain and Spine partner clinics.

 

“I love the relationships you build with patients because these are the people you see every month,” she says. “Knowing we’re making a difference, seeing patients relieved of some of their pain, is rewarding to me.”

For Terica Cox, that means not only making sure patients receive excellent health care, but also asking them about their day, or a recent vacation, or their children. She embodies the patient-focused concept of AIDET and instills it in the people she supervises.

She is also known for both leadership and interpersonal skills. “I want to be the kind of manager that people feel they can come to and talk about anything,” she says. “I try to make it personable and be approachable.”

She has been known to invite team members for holiday dinners, check on those who are sick, or just call and say hello to someone she hasn’t heard from in a while.

“Terica Cox is very passionate about every patient having a great experience,” says Rhonda Boysen, Cox’s supervisor. “I’ve also found her to be engaged and resourceful to providers and support staff in her clinics.”

As you might imagine, family is everything to Cox. She and her husband have two daughters: Nature, who turns 24 this year, and Breyanna, 11.

Nature is following in her mother’s footsteps, taking classes toward her nursing degree. Mother and daughter are study partners, too: Cox is now working on her Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree at West Coast University in Dallas.

“I look forward to continuing to learn and grow,” she says.

 

 

/by