Volume 1
September, 2005

Contents

Make Appointments Online
Get Your Lab Results Online
Controlling Hypertension

Dear Patients,
Sound Family Medicine is pleased to introduce our new online newsletter. We hope to e-mail it to you periodically with information about what’s happening at our clinics, and about medical news we think you may want to hear about. Please be assured that we do not sell or share our e-mail list with anyone else.

This newsletter and, occasionally, other correspondence from our office is the only e-mail you’ll receive as a result of providing your address to us. At SFM we are constantly on the lookout for ways to provide better care for our patients.

We are excited about several new technological advances that we now have at our disposal to serve you better. You can now see your lab test results and schedule an appointment online. We encourage you to try either or both of these services – they’re free to you. We hope you’ll let us know what you think of them, and of this newsletter. Please send us an e-mail and at tell us what you think to customerservice@soundfamilymedicine.com.
 

A technological advance that will save our patients time and effort is online appointments.
Click here for an appointment with one of our health care providers. You will receive both a confirmation and a reminder of your appointment via e-mail. You can make an appointment at any time of the day or night, without so much as picking up a phone. If you don't feel comfortable trying this service, our phone receptionists are here to schedule you too.

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Get Your Test Results Online

We can now offer lab and test results to you via a secure website. Mytestresults.com lets you access your normal lab test results online, generally faster and more easily than if we try to contact you by phone or mail. Mytestresults.com has a high level of security and privacy, above and beyond what ordinary e-mail offers. In fact, HIPPA, the federal law that applies to patient privacy, indicates that ordinary e-mail is not an acceptable method to share confidential patient information. Mytestresults.com is a HIPPA-compliant, secure messaging solution to this issue.

It works like this: When we run your tests, we’ll ask if you’d like to receive your results via the Internet. If you do, you will be given a password and PIN only you will know. When your results are available we’ll post them to the site. You go check them a week or two after the test is done. When you sign onto the site, you’ll be able to view your normal test results, along with a customized message related to it. You can even dial 1-866-234-6989 to retrieve the results by touch-tone phone. The site also archives the results so that you can save and compare results over time. If the test is not normal a provider will call you to discuss the results.
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Controlling Hypertension

Sound Family Medicine is committed to helping you learn about and manage your health concerns. For many people, hypertension – or high blood pressure – is a health risk that is easy to ignore, because it has few obvious symptoms until it causes major physical damage. That’s why we’d like to focus your attention on it over the next few months – by paying attention to it now, you can head off potentially severe health problems in the not so distant future.

Hypertension is a condition where the blood pressure is elevated. It can lead to conditions such as stroke, heart attacks and heart failure, and kidney damage and failure. National studies show that, although controlling hypertension can lead to significant reduction in these complications, less than half of patients with hypertension reach nationally recognized goals for blood pressure. A national panel of experts (The 7th report of the Joint National Committee on Prevention, Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of Hypertension) has set goals for blood pressure control that are widely accepted, and we want to help all of our patients achieve these goals if possible.

Our patients who are not at this goal are being asked to return for reevaluation, and more adequate treatment if appropriate. Patients with hypertension who have not been in for a visit recently are also being asked to come in for reevaluation. National recommendations include:
• Patients who receive a diagnosis of hypertension set a goal blood pressure of less than 130/80, and visit their doctor once a month until this goal is reached.
• Patients with hypertension should be seen at least every 6 months for routine reevaluation and supervision of treatment.
• Patients with diabetes, or multiple cardiac risk factors, should set an even lower goal of less than 120/70.
We are working hard to help our patients with hypertension achieve the best possible control, and to live longer, healthier lives. If you have been diagnosed with hypertension, we encourage you to become an active participant in learning about this condition and taking steps to control it.
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