Dr. Frank Johnson Discusses Why SoFHA is the Best in Primary Care

Read Full Transcript:

WJHL:

State of Franklin Healthcare Associates is a leader when it comes to Primary Care in our region.

And this morning Dr. Frank Johnson joins us to discuss why SoFHA makes sense when you’re looking for healthcare for you and your family.

Good morning doctor, how are you doing today?

Dr. Johnson:

Good morning, I am good, thank you.

WJHL:

Let’s talk about, you know I mentioned Primary Care. What makes SoFHA the best for Primary Care in our region?

Dr. Johnson:

Well, first thank you for the opportunity to be Well, first thank you for the opportunity to be here. Over the past 25 years I have been with SoFHA, I think there are several good reasons for this. Primarily it’s our people. It’s our team, it’s our providers, it’s our strong support staff to those providers. It’s the culture they have which is a patient-focused, patient-centered culture.

That’s the strongest, I think, factor that makes as one of the better choices for primary care.

We have a continuum of clinicians across the spectrum of primary care. I think we cover it quite well.

WJHL:

Right!

Dr. Johnson:

This includes OB, family medicine, pediatrics, internal medicine, GYN, hospitalists, skilled nursing care and palliative care. And most importantly these individuals, these practitioners, these people, they’re very caring. They’re very compassionate and they’re very competent at what they do.

WJHL:

That makes for a good a good outcome for your patients!

And speaking of your patients, what you know over-your years at SoFHA, what improvements have you seen that benefit those patients?

Dr. Johnson:

We’ve not only increased in size, we’ve increased in the services we offer to help our patients with their multiple medical needs. And this has improved availability to the patients, accessibility to the patients, and also we’ve improved the affordability of patient care, or cost, for them.

We have our own urgent care. We also have a pediatric night clinic. An acute care clinic. We have an imaging center, a complete lab, a sleep center, we also have clinical pharmacists on staff. We have dietitians, we have case managers, and we have social workers.

These are all available to the patient, and not only to the patient, but to the physician. And there’s direct and indirect improvements here. With all the support, the physician is able to spend more time to focus on the patient, be it their preventive care needs or chronic care management with hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, diabetes, heart disease, sleep apnea, COPD.

WJHL:

Covering the entire spectrum of care.

Dr. Johnson:

Primary care, we focus on the patient and we focus on primary care.

WJHL:

And you know, we’ve been through this pandemic and it looks like we’re coming out of it a bit here, the numbers are down around our region, talk to me about some of the innovations that SoFHA has come up with during the pandemic for the benefit of patients.

Dr. Johnson:

Our IT department quickly brought up virtual medicine in the forms of audio and visual telemedicine, and that kept us in contact with our patients, so we could continue their care.

We also developed some programs and brought up some off-site and drive-through treatment programs which were extremely well-received by the patients and really protected everyone in the COVID environment.

Initially, we had trouble obtaining the vaccine for COVID. We were proactive and reached out to our local legislative contacts. With their help we were successful in becoming a vaccine center. We were able to offer vaccines not only to our patients, but with anyone in the region. We developed a drive-through program for the flu vaccine and the COVID vaccine. Also, we did a drive-through program for RSV testing, strep, flu and COVID testing. We did over 50,000 COVID tests to date and then when the monoclonal antibodies became available, we had a drive-through program to treat COVID with monoclonal antibodies.

WJHL:

Dr. Frank Johnson, thank you for taking some time with us today. We really appreciate it.

Dr. Johnson:

Our pleasure.