When Dr. Pamela Kapraly found out she had been nominated for an award, she made no grand assumptions about what it could be, joking with her husband that “It’s probably that I’ve got the cleanest desk,” she said.
In January, Kapraly was chosen among her peers to win Memorial Health’s Physician of the Year award. Recipients are chosen according to whom best represents the organization’s mission, vision and values. For Kapraly, the best part of the award isn’t the shiny trophy, rather the extra motivation it gives her to best serve her patients.
“The first thing I noticed was that I was doing more with patients…trying to see how their life was going outside of the office,” Kapraly said. “As I reflected back, I was being a better doctor because I felt I was being recognized for being a better doctor.”
Kapraly has been helping her patients in Richwood since 1992, from her time as an independent practitioner to opening an office with Memorial. It was the influence of Dr. Robert Gray, who Kapraly said was, “here long enough that he delivered babies out a horse-drawn wagon,” that sparked the idea of moving to Richwood.
“It was his stories about how you can get involved in people’s lives,” Kapraly said.
With her husband being a new, young teacher at Buckeye Valley at the time, the fit couldn’t have been more perfect.
Kapraly said it’s the people and the relationships that are the reasons she is in primary care.
“In a small town, the relationships are very deep and very rich,” she said. “I’ve got some patients that I saw as children and now their children are coming here, and that’s just the deepest treasure.”
One such patient is Jeff Stenger, who has had Kapraly as his doctor for around 20 years, as well as his daughter’s doctor for her whole life.
“She takes her time with you, and she’ll sit down and listen, ask a lot of questions and she will also listen to your questions,” Stenger said. He said one thing that makes her so effective is that she will interject personal stories to help patients on a really personal level.
“So if you’re having an issue or something’s going on, ‘well here’s what we do at our house,’” Stenger said.
Kapraly said that she often runs into people in the community who recognize her as their doctor.
“It’s a small enough community that if you’re involved in the community you see people wherever you go, and that’s nice for me,” she said. Kapraly and her husband participate in the Christmas parade as well.
Ken McHattie, Director of Patient Experience with Memorial, summarized what stood out about Kapraly in a single comment.
“(She is) committed to the community and her patients,” McHattie said.
He said the high patient ratings in the Press Ganey rating system also factor into the selection of Physician of the Year, though it’s not a requirement. Press Ganey is a company out of Indiana that does healthcare and customer service ratings. McHattie said that since Kapraly’s Memorial office in Richwood opened, they have consistently been in the top 1% in the United States in patient satisfaction.
Kapraly attributes the office’s high patient satisfaction to the staff.
“We’ve got people who are not only good at what they do, but they’re so outgoing. Our patients love them,” Kapraly said. “That is the staff that we have here, and having excellent staff is the pinnacle for any medical practice.”
Kapraly said as Richwood and the surrounding area grows, their goal is to work as a team and provide continually improving healthcare.
“We want to provide the best healthcare that we can for all of the Dublin people leaking (moving) up here and all of the Deleware people who are wanting to come to a little quieter place,” Kapraly said. “And they’re all used to standards of care and we want to exceed those.”