Forms & Office Policies

We work hard to not overuse antibiotics.

We educate families on appropriate use of antibiotics, but follow evidence-based guidelines and don’t automatically treat ear pain or a green snotty nose with antibiotics.

We do not routinely prescribe antibiotics over the phone as we do not believe that is good medicine. We will prescribe an antibiotic when we believe it is an appropriate treatment.

Everyone's Time is Equally Valuable.

We ask that you arrive 5 minutes before your scheduled appointment time. We understand sometimes things happen beyond your control that may cause you to be late. However, we reserve the right to ask you to reschedule if you arrive late for your appointment.

Our practice makes every effort to run on time with appointments, as we believe everyone’s time is equally valuable. 

Missed Appointments: Broken appointments represent a cost to us, to you, and to other patients who could have been seen in the time set aside for you. We reserve the right to charge a fee for canceled or missed appointments. We request 24 hours notice for cancellation of appointments.

A fee may be charged for a second missed appointment. The third consecutive missed appointment will result in discharge from the practice.

For new patients, a fee may be charged if the FIRST appointment is missed.

Medical records must be requested in writing and signed by a parent or guardian. A copy fee will be determined and is payable at the time of pick up. Please allow up to 30 days for preparation of records. Immunization records are available free of charge and can be picked up by hand, faxed or emailed. Please call the office for a copy of our Medical Records Release Form. 

You will receive a monthly statement from our billing department if there is any outstanding balance on your account. Our insurance department is available to help you should you have any questions concerning your balance or statement. Your statement will provide you with a detailed aging of how long balances have been outstanding. Our financial policy requires that balances older than 120 days are forwarded to our collection agency and we terminate our relationship as your child's physician. We would be happy to assist you in setting up a payment plan. You can reach the billing department at the number at the bottom of your statement.

Co-payments and Deductibles: Your plan often requires you to pay a co-payment and/or meet a yearly deductible. We expect these payments at the time of service. Please be sure that whoever accompanies your child to the office brings the payment with them. We accept cash, checks, and all major credit and debit cards. Co-payments are a contractual obligation between you, your health plan and our practice; if the co-payment obligation is not met, your insurance plan has the right to deny the charges. This may leave you responsible for the services rendered during your visit.

We encourage you to check with your particular plan to ensure that our doctors are participating providers before you are seen at the office. We are happy to file insurance claims, on your behalf, to your primary insurance carrier. However, please understand that you are ultimately responsible for the payment of all charges incurred with the office, regardless of your coverage or reimbursement. Please also be advised that it is your responsibility to inform us of any changes to your insurance coverage immediately. This will ensure that you are not held personally liable for any charges due to incorrect coverage information. In addition, most insurance plans cover 1 well exam per calendar year. Please check with your individual plan for coverage. Our office will try to accommodate these visits, but ultimately you will be responsible for payment of premature appointments.

It is the policy of the office that no new medication is prescribed without first being seen in the office. Furthermore, it is the physician's policy not to phone in any prescriptions without the patient being evaluated in the office. For all refill prescriptions, please have your pharmacy contact us via phone. Patients receiving maintenance controlled substances prescriptions require quarterly visits to the office to ensure the safety and efficacy of the medications.

We are happy to provide you with referrals to sub-specialists as needed. We respectfully request the sub-specialists contact information be provided to our office as soon as the appointment is made. We will need the specialist's NPI number as well as their fax number, appointment date, and location. Please allow up to 1 week for the referral to be completed. We also realize that emergent appointments will arise and we will make every effort to accommodate those requests.

Efficiency through the use of technology

You will be encouraged to consult our website, register for and use our patient portal, and effectively use automated reminders for appointments.

If you need to contact our practice after hours please call our main phone number. A provider is available 24hrs/day, 7 days/week including all weekends and holidays. While we encourage all patients to call with any significant medical concern, we respectfully request that any non-emergent issues be addressed during normal business hours.

When calling after hours you will get a voice mail prompt indicating that the office is currently closed. It will then instruct you in transferring the call to our afterhours call center. The message will be given to our on call provider, who will then call you back promptly. Please be certain that your call back phone number will accept calls from anonymous/blocked phone numbers. For privacy purposes, our physicians frequently use blocked phones.

All patients are encouraged to call with any questions. Staff is available to answer the phones Monday-Friday. The office staff is trained to answer most non-clinical questions. For medically related questions, the staff will triage the call and forward it appropriately to one of our clinical staff. Response time will vary during office hours. If you feel an urgency regarding a medical issue, our staff will be happy to accommodate you with an appointment immediately, so that we can assess your concern rather than waiting for a call back. Our physicians typically return most non-urgent calls after office hours.

As medical professionals, we feel very strongly that vaccinating children on schedule with currently available vaccines is absolutely the right thing to do for all children and young adults. We are making you aware of these facts not to scare you or coerce you, but to emphasize the importance of vaccinating your child. We are more than willing to discuss any questions you may have about vaccines, but do require all new patients to our practice to adhere to the vaccination schedule endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)

We firmly believe in the effectiveness of vaccines to prevent serious illness and to save lives.

We firmly believe in the safety of our vaccines.

We firmly believe that all children and young adults should receive all of the recommended vaccines according to the schedule published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).

• We firmly believe, based on all available literature, evidence, and current studies, that vaccines do not cause autism or other developmental disabilities.
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• We firmly believe that thimerosal, a preservative that has been in vaccines for decades and remains in some vaccines, does not cause autism or other developmental disabilities.
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• We firmly believe that vaccinating children and young adults may be the single most important health promoting intervention we perform as health care providers, and that you can support as parents/caregivers.

The recommended vaccines and the schedule of administration are the results of years and years of scientific study and data-gathering on millions of children by thousands of our brightest scientists and physicians.

The vaccine campaign is truly a victim of its own success. It is precisely because vaccines are so effective at preventing illness that we are even discussing whether or not they should be given. Because of vaccines, many of you have never seen a child with polio, tetanus, whooping cough, bacterial meningitis, or even chickenpox, or known a friend or family member whose child died of one of these diseases. Such success can make us complacent or even lazy about vaccinating. But such an attitude, if it becomes widespread, can only lead to tragic results.

Over the past several years, many people in Europe have chosen not to vaccinate their children with the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine after publication of an unfounded suspicion (later retracted) that the vaccine caused autism. As a result of under-immunization, there have been small outbreaks of measles and several deaths from complications of measles in Europe over the past several years. The United States experienced a record number of measles cases during 2019, with 1282 cases from 31 states reported to CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD). This is the greatest number of cases since measles elimination was documented in the U.S. in 2000.