Practice Better

I initially connected with Deanna DeWitt, a Dietitian at The Shala in Huntington, West Virginia, and the experience has been nothing short of incredible. From the start, Deanna sent me an extensive set of documents to complete, capturing a detailed history of my eating habits and requesting my previous and current lab tests. I was already impressed before even meeting her. After a week of exchanging documents, I finally arrived at The Shala for our appointment. Sitting down with Deanna felt like consulting a nutritional scientist as she meticulously reviewed my lab results and discussed specific foods that could enhance my health. Our conversation lasted over an hour, during which she had crafted a personalized meal plan tailored to my lifestyle and lab results. I left with a clear strategy for transforming my diet and enhancing my quality of life at the age of 64, focusing on longevity and wellness. Inspired by the encounter, I reached out to five of my closest friends, urging them to connect with Deanna for their own personalized game plans. I wholeheartedly recommend Deanna—her work is truly a passion, not just a job.

I have used this documentation system for a month and cannot tell you how frustrating it is to be in the middle of documentation only to have it become slow and unresponsive. It regularly happens in the afternoons and intermittently at other times during the day. I can write a paragraph and then I have to sit there and wait for the app to catch up. It may take ten or more seconds to load a single letter. It took fifteen minutes to load a five sentence paragraph the other day. I have tried all of my devices: phone, tablet, and two laptops. I have also been on a variety of high speed wifi connections. It doesn’t matter. The lag time and glitchy performance increases the documentation time 4 fold. It should never take an hour to write a SOAP note. The lag time significantly impacts clinician efficiency and is incredibly frustrating for me. If I was the practice owner, I would completely switch platforms based on my experience thus far, it has been that much of a headache. When it works, it’s great, but in my initial experience using this documentation system, it is unreliable and not worth it given the impact to my productivity and efficiency.

Very well designed and interactive components make for powerful patient-team collaboration. Responsive support and deep dive sessions are giraffe head and shoulders above the rest. Templating features and forms are a breeze, automations are limited yet powerful too. Versatile tools allow us to create protocols, forms, patient notes as needed and able to share such components as needed. Immense growth potential which we hope and expect to come. Needs more white labeling not so much their own branding it also confusing people. Extensive menus that are different on different screen sizes and device types can trip you up given the depth of available features and no way to order or control menus for what you need most or not at all. Needs improvement eg a shared team inbox for patient communication, form import templates that are global and similar team centric enhancements. Client side should start of simpler to help them onboard again if we can limit what menus they see might help. Need easier way for patients to enter data we spending a lot of time training them to use the system.