Judoka Jessica Gal represented the Netherlands at the Olympic Games in Seoul, Barcelona, Atlanta, and Sydney. After her elite sports career, she built a network of sports medical clinics. Recently, she became officially family, as our parent company, the Heart for Health Group, acquired a stake in Jessica Gal Sports Physicians. In addition, we recently installed our Electronic Patient Record MedicalPortal 2.0 at her clinics. Three questions for Jessica.
1. Why did you start as an independent healthcare entrepreneur?
Jessica: ‘Unfortunately, you can’t make a living from judo. Besides my judo career, I studied medicine. As an elite athlete, you are always focused on your body, and at Papendal, I was inspired by sports physician Peter Vergouwen from NOC*NSF. He actually led me onto the path of becoming a sports physician, combining my two passions. And as an elite athlete, I immediately set the bar high: I wanted to take the profession of sports physician to an even higher level. More personal attention, involvement, and a deeper level of being valuable. Having been an elite athlete myself really helps with that.’
Eventually, I realized that I could best fulfill my ambition by opening my own clinic. Fifteen years ago, we opened our first location in Amsterdam. A place that looked great, with a lot of attention to the patient, fast care, easily accessible, and I could shape it entirely according to my own ideas and vision. We now have three clinics, in Amsterdam, Haarlem, and Zaandam.
2. What has been your experience with MedicalPortal so far?
”Shortly after our establishment, in 2016, we started using MedicalPortal 1.0. We’ve always been able to work with it smoothly. We got to know it through our neighbors – and now our ‘big sister’ within the Heart for Health Group – Cardiologie Centra Nederland.
Last year, we switched to MedicalPortal 2.0. What I like about it is that it’s not a ready-made product, but that we can fine-tune it to our specific needs as sports medical clinics. An EHR is an important part of your operations and should contribute to making processes smoother and simpler. MedicalPortal certainly brings us that automation and flexibility. Since it’s so important for your operations, I’m happy that we can communicate well and quickly with the Heart for Health team. There are always issues, of course, but we can solve them together effectively.”
3. What are your ambitions for the future?
”With the stake that the Heart for Health Group has taken in our clinics, we hope to accelerate our growth and professionalization. We see enormous demand among professional athletes, but also among amateur athletes, in the areas of injury consultations, sports medical consultations, and preventive sports medical exams. We can now respond to this demand more quickly and effectively. I expect the number of clinics to grow in the coming years. I am really excited to continue working on this together with our own fantastic team and with colleagues within the Heart for Health Group.”