Dr. Angie Palafox has a special interest in the surgical care of breast diseases with an emphasis on the comprehensive care of breast cancer patients in South San Antonio and South Texas.
She has extensive breast cancer surgery experience and is committed to providing state-of-the-art care that helps her patients heal and recover.
The Challenge
Angie has been in private practice since 2006 and in her solo private practice since 2015 with two employees and one contractor. Angie also has a current goal of launching a book and planner for breast cancer patients.
“My husband and I were trying to grow and run the practice together with just me and him which was very difficult — it’s just like any other small business,” Angie recalls. “And then I had a small child, and I was feeling overwhelmed and scattered every single day.
“I started listening to podcasts about how to organize my time [and] how to pull myself together because I felt like I was losing my mind.”
Then, Angie heard about BELAY on a Michael Hyatt podcast.
“To tell you the truth, my husband was against it at first because he was worried about spending money because I am just a small practice and our budget is tight,” Angie admits.
“I went for it, and I did it anyway. It was the best decision I ever made.”
And there entered BELAY VA Lisa Molettiere.
The Solution
Two of the most important things for Angie that Lisa helps her with are scheduling and email management.
“I was just kind of doing my own scheduling off the top of my head,” Angie says. “When I realized all of the things that she does for me now and keeps me in line with, [I can see that] it’s going a million times better than I ever did on my own. Knowing that I don’t have to constantly check my email is a huge load off for me.”
“She’s very helpful because she constantly reminds me, ‘Here’s something I can do for you’ or ‘Why don’t you let me do this?’ which I really appreciate.”
Angie often refers to our 25 Things You Can Delegate to an Assistant Today resource in her engagement with Lisa.
“Having Lisa reaching out to people and communicating to them on my behalf is a huge help,” Angie says. “It’s nice to send people thank yous, flowers or cookies. I always wanted to remember to do that – and now I remember because Lisa does it for me.”
The Result
Angie has a lot of patients who need to learn and understand what is going on, what stage of their treatment they are in, why, and what is next.
“[My patients] go through this difficult thing in their life of breast cancer, and they can’t remember anything about it,” Angie says. “They can’t remember who did what or what they had, and it’s not chemo brain; it was too overwhelming and they couldn’t remember.”
“I realized patients really understand little when they’re highly stressed. I have this dream of [writing] a planner with a book portion added to it.”
“My patients have a lot of questions, so I thought if I write this all down and I put it in this format, they have it handy and they can keep copies of all of the things that are important for the next doctor taking care of them.”
“It gives them [the] power to get control in an uncontrollable situation.”
Angie has been dreaming of accomplishing this project for four years, and Lisa has been able to help her execute it.
“I had it in this very elementary stage,” Angie says. “I had an idea for it but I hadn’t started to put it together. Lisa got us further in three months than I have gotten in four years.”
“She proofread all of my chapters, put together the appointment calendars, added a place for notes, and created the design for the front and back cover. She has also made suggestions thinking from the patient’s side.”
“She’s on her game and very organized, and that experience lends itself to my book.”
By gaining the right support, Lisa has helped Angie realize the potential of an organized, eight or 10-hour workday versus her 14-hour days.
“What I was constantly worried about was that I was going to blow it in some way,” Angie admits.
“I was worried I was either going to forget to do something, forget to schedule something, or forget to follow up with something, and I have substantially less of that [fear] because of Lisa.”
Meet the Specialist
LISA MOLETTIERE
Virtual Assistant