Dr Ronel Gowar has run a fully paperless plastic surgery practice for over a decade, streamlining patient care with Altron HealthTech’s digital solutions. This Breast Cancer Awareness Month, she highlights the importance of early detection and year-round awareness for women’s health.
It’s been about a decade since Dr Ronel Gowar went into private practice. At the time, the Gqeberha-based doctor made a commitment to run a paperless business – a promise she’s kept over the years thanks to her partnership with Altron HealthTech.
Leaning on products like Elixir Live to deal with billing and payment allocations, and HealthONE to manage her appointment scheduling, and securely store all patient data, Dr Gowar’s practice thrives on streamlined simplicity.
“Technology and I don’t go well together, so for me to be able to just press a button and see what’s happening with a particular medical aid, or with a particular patient, or with my diary, is phenomenal.”
One-on-one patient care has always been at the heart of Dr Gowar’s practice, which is why working with a web-based system – accessible remotely and from any device – is crucial for the streamlined flow of her business.
“It’s important for me to have information at my fingertips whenever I need it,” she adds.
While digitisation, electronic communication and AI tools often get a bad rap for depersonalising the one-on-one experience between doctor and patient, Dr Gowar uses Altron HealthTech’s medical software to streamline her practice and simplify her life. This, in turn, gives her the tools she needs to better communicate and spend time with her patients.
Blood tests or pathology reports, for instance, are all communicated electronically. But according to Dr Gowar, if you’re not an IT specialist, and you don’t work with a service provider that takes the hassle out of this type of electronic communication, it’s an uphill battle to balance administration with one-on-one patient care.
“It creates a massive divide in terms of how you interact with your patients and your colleagues. It also affects what information you can get from your colleagues and what information you can share. she says.
Dr Gowar also relies on HealthONE’s note-taking capabilities to better communicate with her patients.
“Plastic surgery is a very visual specialty, so I often need to explain things to patients with drawings or diagrams without reverting to the ‘convenience’ of pen and paper,” she says.
Dr Gowar was first drawn to the idea of a career in plastic surgery – with a special interest in oncoplastics – when her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer about 18 years ago. As a next-of-kin, Dr Gowar realised the need for surgeons to have as much compassion as they have knowledge about their specialty, which is where it all started for her.
This is also why there is such synergy between Dr Gowar’s practice and Altron HealthTech’s ethos: to manage time-consuming administrative responsibilities by outsourcing and automating them. Partnering with Altron HealthTech to take care of your billing and admin gives surgeons like Dr Gowar the time and space needed to be fully present with their patients. What does this look like? For some, a more focused, distraction-free consultation. For others, more time to answer the questions of patients and their loved ones.
This is also why initiatives like Breast Cancer Awareness Month are crucial for heightened education around the topic, giving surgeons and clinicians the opportunity to share their knowledge and experience, as well as any new developments that may have emerged year-on-year.
And with breast cancer being the most common cancer among women worldwide Dr Gowar advocates for awareness campaigns to run all year long. According to CANSA, 1 in 27 South African women will face the disease in their lifetime, measured against 1 in 42 women who are at risk for cervical cancer.
“It’s become a big part of my weekly workload to treat and manage patients with breast cancer. As grateful as I am that there’s a month dedicated to awareness around the issue, I do also think it’s become a year-long problem,” she says.
No-one can control what happens to them medically, especially when it comes to cancer. You can, however, control whether cancer is picked up early, which is why Dr Gowar advises all patients to take note of changes in their body.
“Just be aware. Know your own body well enough so that you notice when something is changing. This applies whether it’s skin- or breast-related, or in November when we’re focusing on testicular cancer… Whichever part of your body it is, if you pick up on it, act on it. Early detection is really the only tool we have to fight something we otherwise can’t control.”
Dr Gowar specialises in oncoplastic surgery which combines the skills needed for surgical oncology (cancer excision) with plastic surgery reconstructive techniques. The latter is often required for patients with breast cancer undergoing a mastectomy, breast reconstruction, or breast conservation surgery.