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Hi, my name is Mike Richwalsky,
I live in Avon, Ohio just outside of Cleveland.
I'm married and have two kids, and we've been with
Kaiser Permanente just over a year now.
My son needed a surgical procedure before we were Kaiser
members and the experience that we had with another system was
just really frustrating.
They felt like we weren't in control of our health.
To give an example, before his procedure he needed an
ultrasound and we went to a local facility,
had the ultrasound in the pre-operating room to hear the
doctor say, did you guys do the ultrasound and we thought,
yeah, why don't you have the results
and why did you never see that?
So A it's a little bit frustrating on a medical level
that the information was not readily available and shared
facility to facility and doctor to doctor.
But we were really frustrated that that ultrasound test,
we didn't know it, but we had a bill for 300 dollars.
So that was 300 dollars out of our pocket
that ultimately went for nothing.
In the year that we've had Kaiser we haven't found that,
whether we've been in the facility here locally or one of
the other Cleveland locations through the medical record
system that they have, everything is right there,
so prescriptions, test results, you know,
doctors notes, everything that's available throughout the system,
so I feel confident now knowing that if one of us has a test at
the facility, the rest of the network is going
to know about it and be able to act on it.
What I like as a busy professional and father is my
schedule is very full, my calendar is booked,
I'm commuting back and forth, the kids have activities.
So the ability to schedule appointments,
e-mail my doctor directly online,
get lab results, refill prescriptions
are all just huge timesavers for me.
What's nice as a busy dad is that I'm able to access not only
my medical records and test information but my kids as well.
They're busy and they always need forms filled out and
records for scouts and school and fieldtrips and all this kind
of stuff, so being able to just access that all here at home,
print them off and I'm good to go is really nice.
My experience over the last couple months
with the My Health Manager website
has been great, I have been able to send
messages to my doctor and get replies back in-in really
an hour or two, which is pretty amazing.
I know they're very busy and the fact that they make it a
priority to be checking these messages and respond back to me
is important to me, it makes me feel like you know I'm being
taken care of, I'm being paid attention to,
which is really nice.
Because of all the tools online, the local facilities,
the great doctors, I feel like my time has just been really
freed up to spend more time with my boys,
to relax and so all of that is just –
just made my life so much easier.
I know that Kaiser Permanente can take care of my family's
everyday health needs through all the things that they offer,
great relationships with our doctor,
costs that are expected and the technology that
makes managing our health very easy.
At the end of the day we're glad that we switched over.
We feel like we're really in more control of our health.