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Ofek Laks

KINS 4306

Reflection Paper
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Introduction

My name is Ofek Laks and for the Spring semester of 2022, I interned at Lake Country

Medical Group in Eatonton Georgia. Lake Country Medical Group is a private practice that

specializes in: Internal Medicine, Cardiology, Women’s Health, Wellness, Advanced Imaging,

and Clinical Trails. The providers who work in the office are Dr. Nicolas Chronos M.D. who is

the internal medicine provider with a focus in cardiology, Dr. Peter Chapman M.D. who is the

electrophysiologist and cardiologist, and Dr. Eric Silver M.D. who is the women’s health care

specialist. The NPs who also work alongside the providers are Maureen Bowser FNP, Michelle

Lamm NP, and Tiffany Moreno NP. The patients who come to this office are those mostly over

the age of 65 living from areas of Milledgeville GA through Athens GA. The mission statement

of Lake Country Medical Group is, “Lake Country Medical Group is dedicated to our patient’s

total health and wellness. With our multi-specialty team and world class facility, we provide

comprehensive care for a greater quality of life”.

Description of Experiences

Throughout my internship experience at Lake Country Medical Group, I was given 2

main roles that I would be doing during my everyday tasks. The roles were split into what I

classified as “public health” tasks and “marketing” tasks since I was grateful enough to be given

these since I am a public health major with a minor in marketing, so this internship enabled me

to use skills I have learned from my undergraduate education. For the public health section, my

work was split into the programs: CCM, TCM, RPM, and Concierge. CCM was the main

program that myself and the other interns who interned here worked on.
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CCM is known as Chronic Care Management, so what this means is that it is a Medicare

covered program in which gives patients a more personalized access to their care. The program

entailed in monthly check in calls where the patients would be asked how they were doing, and

the care team would be able to take care of all their needs and give more access to their care. My

role for this program was to go into patient’s rooms or call them through their telemedicine

appointments and give them information about the program and then enroll. Once we were able

to enroll the patients, I would bill them accordingly to their Medicare insurance which was very

interesting to learn on how the practice does their billing procedures. 48 hours after I enrolled the

patients into CCM, I would give them their welcome calls and let them know that after that call

their monthly calls would start rolling in, but always welcome to call the CCM line if needing

anything. I would say this was the most fun part of the internship experience because it helped

me get to know a lot of patients in the office and helped me gain communication skills while also

doing administrative duties. It also helped how almost all the patients who me and the other

interns enrolled into the program were very kind and sounded excited about CCM.

The next program that the other interns and I worked on a lot was the Remote Patient

Monitoring Program (RPM). RPM is another Medicare covered program where the patients can

take home either or both a blood pressure cuff and scale where they can monitor their vitals from

their homes. The patients are instructed to take their BP and weight at least twice a day and once

they do this, the information is then transferred to the nurse practitioner where they can monitor

their status constantly. My role for this program is that I go into patients’ rooms and enroll and

show how to use the devices, so they can take them home. Then throughout the week I assist the

nurse with checking their chart to see if they are taking their vitals when supposed to and taking

note to see if there are any irregularities. I enjoy doing this program because many adults over
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the age of 65 suffer from hypertension or obesity, so I am glad I get to see first-hand how these

devices can assist to improve their conditions. Throughout the internship I also got to work with

our Transitional Care Management Program, which was a side sector of the CCM program. TCM

works with getting follow up care if the patients were recently admitted to a hospital for a

procedure or an emergency. This program allowed us to make sure the patients were getting

more access to their care and better follow ups after their procedures. We did the least work

when it came to the concierge practice which is a more private practice inside the office, but the

other interns and I were able to learn about it and do small administrative tasks for it.

The other section of my internship were the marketing tasks. My duties were to write

blogs for the website weekly on topics that Dr. Chronos had asked me to do, create an Instagram

post that coordinates with the blog, and create educational material for the office whenever

needed. I believe this was the most rewarding part of my internship because two of my articles

had been published into a local Lake Oconee magazine. From this section of my internship, I got

to learn how to use programs like “Canva” and Constant Contact in order to create these

materials. Overall, both sections have made my experience at Lake Country Medical Group an

amazing educational opportunity. I would not have changed anything from my experience, but if

there was a task, I wish I had done less of is the monthly care calls. After making 30+ calls in a

day it can become very tiring and there were days where I felt very defeated after them.

Perception and Evaluation of Internship

Looking back at my experience, Lake Country Medical Group exceeded my personal

expectations! This internship has given me many experiences and helped me develop skills that I

will be able to take with me to my future career paths. Since in the fall I will be pursuing a

master’s in health administration, this experience was exactly what I needed to help me become
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more passionate and prepared to enter the healthcare field. The best part of this experience was

that the organization asked me and the other interns about our opinions on things and they were

very open to our ideas and contributions. We had come up with new standard operations for the

CCM program and the way some things are run in the day-to-day office. The marketing

coordinator asked for my opinions several times when it came to how we should market the

office better and bring the word out. I had created a “Link tree” for the office that can be used to

access the blogs I had written and the website which is posted as a link on their Instagram

accounts.

The supervision from our experience went very well as well! We had 2 supervisors

named RJ Brooks who is the Director of Operations at Lake Country Medical Group and Nick

Allman who is the program coordinator and finance manager, and both of our supervisors did a

very great job in being active and present during our internship. Nick was the supervisor who

was in charge in giving us our daily tasks, and he would sit with us in the conference room while

completing these in case we ever had any questions or concerns while RJ oversaw running our

overall experience. There are no areas where I believe that there could have been improvisions at

Lake Country Medical Group, this was an amazing internship experience, and I am grateful I

was able to partake in it. I would recommend this internship for public health students who are

interested in entering the healthcare field. This internship gives students a hand on of the behind

the scenes in the healthcare field and provided me with a lot of information I can take with me in

the future. This experience has made me become more passionate for the healthcare field and I

am very excited that it has given me a jumpstart to beginning a career in a setting such as this.

While I am not sure yet if I want to work in a private practice after my masters, this experience

has given me a good idea of what it would be like for me and my career path.
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Internship Preparedness

Going into the internship, I felt somewhat prepared academically for the placement when

it came to the public health section of my duties, but I was more prepared when it was for my

marketing duties. The areas I felt where I was the most confident was creating the Instagram

posts using Canva and writing the blog posts, where the areas I felt the least confident in was at

the beginning of learning the CCM program I did not grasp the full idea of the program and it

was a bit difficult to learn how to use the programs. The course I referenced the most when

discussing topics at the internship were the Public Health Policy and Health Promotion courses.

The health policy course helped the other interns and I when it came to specific polices,

we needed to follow in the office and how Medicare insurance works. This office mostly has

patients over the age of 65, so understanding how Medicare works was very important. The skills

learned from that course is the operations of how to respond to certain situations when it comes

to policies and how to reduce the risks of getting in trouble with healthcare because in this field

if the rules and policies are not followed it can lead to many consequences. The skills I brought

with me from the health promotion course is how in certain areas of a population, there are

certain conditions that are more prevalent, so when enrolling patients into CCM we took those

into consideration. Another skill is we discussed how health promotion is important in areas

where the standard of living is lower, and their social determinants of health are lower in this

population as well. If I had any recommendations for the School of Health and Human

Performance for better preparation of Public Health Students, I would maybe offer a course

specifically for healthcare settings. This course could help students who are interested in the

healthcare field learn more info about the behind-the-scenes tasks like administrative duties and

insurance since I learned about all of that information during my internship. I believe a course
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like this could help students pick their internship placements as well if they had more

information and learned skills before being thrown into the field.

Internship Performance

Lake Country Medical Groups internship has allowed me to not only learn new skills and

knowledge, but also work on some skills I had before entering the experience. The skills I

already had that I got to work on was my communication skills. Before I started the internship, I

felt like I had strong communication skills, but then I was able to work on them by getting to

speak to new patients everyday about the CCM program and I also was able to work on

communication with Dr Chronos and my superiors. Another skill I got to work on was my

writing skills by writing the weekly blogs. Blog writing is very different than the assignments I

would write for my courses, so I was able to learn on the different writing types while writing the

weekly blogs on my research. A new skill I had learned at Lake Country Medical Group is how

to work in processes. While enrolling patients into CCM and RPM there were specific SOPs in

which were needed to follow, so I was able to learn how to do this and I ended up enjoying

getting to do this because it helped me feel more organized. I also learned more knowledge on

how private practices interact with their patients and I also got to learn more information about

cardiology in general. While enrolling patients into their program I would do research on their

conditions, and it gave me a better grasp on how the programs can benefit their health and I

learned more information on these conditions which I can bring with me into my future career.

I am very satisfied when it came to my performance of my assignments throughout my

internship experience. When I started writing the blog posts and creating the posts I needed a lot

of room for improvement, but the marketing coordinator would sit with me and tell me the skulls

I needed to work on, so I was able to grow more and more as I continued creating these. If I
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would rate my work at the beginning of the internship, I would give myself a 5 since the

information was good, but the formatting was not always correct. Now that I have had this

semester where I constantly was working on these assignments, I would rate them now at an 8

due to the consistency of the correct formatting. At the beginning of the internship, the marketing

coordinator and I developed a schedule of when my assignments and tasks were due, so I feel as

if my time management went very well since I would dedicate at least 2 hours every day outside

of my public health tasks to work on my blogs and Instagram posts. The skills I still need to

work on are how to do specific wording for the population, since the patients are an older

generation, they use different language so I need to continue working on how to say certain

things in ways they would better understand.

Personal/Professional Insights/ Benefits

This internship at Lake Country Medical Group has greatly impacted not only my

professional goals but also my personal ones. This internship has helped me grow to become a

healthcare professional and inspired me to want to do more in this field. Lake Country Medical

Group has helped me become more passionate for the healthcare field and this has helped me

grow into a more self-aware person when it comes to current times in this field. This experience

has helped me become a more confident person when it comes to my working habits and skills. I

feel more comfortable, and I know what I am capable of when it comes to the tasks I am

assigned, and I know I will be able to accomplish them. The insights I have gained regarding the

population I worked with was how those over the age of 65 is a good population to start working

with when entering the healthcare field. Almost all the patients have been very kind and I also

was able to get a better perspective of how they live their lives and their health consequences.

The senior population is sensitive, so it is important for anyone who is planning on entering the
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healthcare field to get a better understanding since from what I have learned in other courses is

that this population is usually deprived of proper care. I am grateful every day I was able to

complete my internship here for the Spring semester and I wouldn’t have done it any other way.