Dr. J. Gary Dela Cruz runs a pediatric clinic with his father, Dr. Edgar Dela Cruz, in Honolulu, Hawaii. The father-son duo treat over 1,000 patients in their clinic and needed a zero-step HIPAA compliant email solution that would save time in office operations and allow them to treat more patients. Here is a transcript of Dr. Cruz’s experience with Paubox. You can watch the entire interview here.
Hoala Greevy: Howzit, this is Hoala Greevy, Founder CEO of Paubox. I’m here in Kalihi on the island of Oahu. I'm here with Dr. Gary Dela Cruz and here's another Paubox customer success video interview. And without further ado, let's get started. Gary, thanks for being with us today.
Dr. Gary Dela Cruz: Thanks for having me.
Hoala Greevy: Can you tell me more about your practice?
Dr. Gary Dela Cruz: So I am a pediatrician here in Kalihi. We have a practice of about 1,000 or so patients and it is a very busy clinic. My father, Edgar, started this practice about 30 years ago. I joined him about 15 years ago, and we’ve been working hard ever since.
Hoala Greevy: Pediatrician focus, is there a particular something deeper we can dig into that that you folks are known for?
Dr. Gary Dela Cruz: What general pediatricians do, what community pediatricians do is, we need to coordinate our patients care - especially with children with special healthcare needs. These are complex patients that have a lot of specialists who are involved in taking care of them. The difficulty of getting the information out to these doctors is being sensitive to their (the patient’s) protected healthcare information. So one thing that Paubox can do is we can easily email a recipient any information they may need.
Hoala Greevy: Oh that’s wonderful. And you work a lot with other hospitals in the area, is that correct?
Dr. Gary Dela Cruz: We do. Yes, we do. Kapi’olani Medical Center, Queens Medical Center.
Hoala Greevy: Got it. And how does HIPAA interact with your daily workflow and operations?
Dr. Gary Dela Cruz: Well we basically have to be very careful in terms of sending protected health information to other doctors, to other entities who require that information. So we have to be very sensitive in how we send it.
Hoala Greevy: And before Paubox, what was life like as far as your workflow when it came to emails and PHI?
Dr. Gary Dela Cruz: Well, PHI was a lot of printing and a lot of faxing, and a lot of phone calls. Stuff that took a lot of our time, time that would have probably been better spent working with patients.
Hoala Greevy: Yeah, definitely. And now that you've been having Paubox, what are some of the benefits you’re seeing from it?
Dr. Gary Dela Cruz: We are saving a lot of time, we are saving a lot of effort. Instead of printing and faxing, with Paubox it’s been very easy to send protected health information to whoever is requiring it.
Hoala Greevy: That’s great. Gary, so I understand you’ve got over 1000 patients. And obviously billing needs to take place when these people are coming to see you. Has Paubox affected your billing workflow in any way?
Dr. Gary Dela Cruz: Yes, it really has. Our biller works from home, so thus we would have to spend a lot of time either on the phone with her whenever had a question or concern. We’d actually have to print items out and fax it to her, which is just a lot of waste of paper. Once Paubox came in, we were able to send her any information she needed and it was an easy transition from faxing to Paubox because seamless encryption, no passwords to remember, very easy.
Hoala Greevy: Speaking of passwords, you’re in the medical space obviously. You’ve seen other secure email solutions. Can you share some of the pains you’ve seen when other people send you secure emails and portals and things like that?
Dr. Gary Dela Cruz: Yes. When other insurance carriers have information that needs to be sent, they'll either fax us, which still takes up a lot of paper, or they will send us encrypted emails, in which case it would require you to enter a login and the password which you would have to remember somehow, or you'd have to write your password down and keep it. Sometimes, that password has to get changed every so often, so it's just a very big hassle with these passwords.
Hoala Greevy: Yeah, tons of frictions out there. Definitely. So is your dad still practicing?
Dr. Gary Dela Cruz: He is. He is still practicing. He opened his practice back in 1981. We moved to this building in 1995 and he’s been here in this particular office for over 20 years.
Hoala Greevy: Wow. So when you were growing up, did you know you wanted to follow in his footsteps?
Dr. Gary Dela Cruz: I knew what I wanted to do. He’s lucky. Everyone said I’m lucky my dad’s a doctor to have a practice to go into. But his friends tell him that he’s lucky that he had a son that wanted to become a doctor and follow in his footsteps.
Hoala Greevy: Succession planning.
Dr. Gary Dela Cruz: Either way, we’re both pretty lucky.
Hoala Greevy: That’s great man. Hey right on Gary, thanks.
Dr. Gary Dela Cruz: Thanks Hoala.
Dr. Gary Dela Cruz is a pediatrician serving the Kalihi community on the Hawaii island of Oahu. Working alongside his father, Dr. Edgar Dela Cruz, the two treat over 1,000 patients and work with Kapi’olani Medical Center and Queens Medical Center.