New patient guide

Before your child’s scheduled appointment, you will receive a text message with details of the appointment, as well as a pre check-in registration that you should complete prior to arriving. This registration will review demographic info, insurance info, and includes an age-appropriate questionnaire for parents to complete.

Pediatric Associates has a team that verifies and confirms all appointments on the schedule 2-3 days ahead of time and will reach out via text if any insurance issues are found.

Your appointment day is here, and you arrive at one of our offices. Our medical receptionists get any updated information, collect forms and copays, and ask to see your drivers license and insurance card to get you checked into our computer system. They verify your contact info every visit, just to make sure we can get in touch with you if we need to — you might be surprised how often phone numbers and email addresses change.

While you’re waiting, our Medical Assistants (MAs) and Providers are busy seeing other patients and preparing your exam room. Because we have multiple Providers seeing patients at one time, you may not be called back into an exam room in the order you arrived or were checked in. We know that can be frustrating sometimes, but if someone goes back before you, they’re seeing a different Provider who’s running on a different schedule.

We try, of course, to be as fast and efficient as possible. But we can’t always predict when other concerns or problems or even emergencies will arise, and we always want to give every one of our patients as much time as we need to make the best possible assessment, provide the best possible care, and, of course, answer all your questions and concerns. We do our best to let you know when a Provider is running behind, but please feel free to ask for an update if it seems like you’ve been waiting for a while.

Once your child is brought back to the Exam Room, one of our MAs will get a complete set of vital signs (height, weight, temperature, and blood pressure), and ask some necessary medical history questions — which allows your Provider, especially in the case of a sick visit, to get a quick picture of what’s going on before entering the room. If you’ve filled out a Pre-Visit Questionnaire before your appointment, we won’t have to ask you questions, because we’ll already have all the info we need. This information helps your Provider guide the visit and any potential treatment. (Sometimes your Provider will ask similar questions, but that’s because they’re trying to pinpoint things just a little more clearly.)

All of our MAs have medical training, so they’re prepared to spot any warning signs or “red flags” that come up when taking vitals and reviewing your history. If they see a sign for concern — if, say, a child who came in for cough and cold symptoms is wheezing and breathing rapidly — they’ll get an available Provider into the room right away. Situations like this are one reason you may sometimes have a longer-than-usual wait; we’ll skip over appointment order if it’s necessary to safeguard the health and safety of one of our patients.

Once all of your information has been gathered, the MA will leave the exam room and let your Provider know you’re ready to be seen.

Now it’s your turn!

Once your Provider reviews the history and asks if you have any other questions or concerns, they begin their exam. After the exam, once your Provider has finished the Well Visit or made a diagnosis and recommended treatment for a Sick Visit, your child may need immunizations, testing, or treatments in the office. If that’s the case, your Provider alerts your MA, who will prepare — and then deliver — whatever you need to complete your appointment.

Once your exam and treatment are complete, you head back to the front office to check out. This is the perfect time to make your next appointment, pick up any forms you need to have completed, and any prescriptions or referrals that have been printed for you. This is also the time for patients who have a balance from the visit and/or pay out of pocket to make your payment.

Once you walk out the door, we still haven’t completed your visit; a few important things are still happening inside our offices.

First, your Provider completes what’s called an Office Encounter by putting all the notes and documentation into your chart. Once the visit notes are complete, you can see a summary of them in your Patient Portal account. (Though they’re usually available by the end of the day, notes can sometimes take up to 2 or 3 days to appear on the Portal.)

Once the office notes have been completed, they’re reviewed by our Posters — the members of our staff who attach charges to bills and make sure they’re correct — before our Billers submit them to your insurance company.

Once the bill has been submitted to your insurance company, our Billers follow the charges and update your account after payment is received. We may not know until then whether there are certain charges or parts of your bill that your individual insurance plan did or didn’t cover. If there’s a balance due, our Billers will automatically charge your account if you’ve signed up for AutoPay, or prepare and send a bill if you’re still receiving paper statements.

There’s one more important group of people you may not encounter in the office, but with whom you frequently speak on the phone: our fabulous clinical advice team, a group comprised of Medical Assistants, Licensed Practical Nurses, and Registered Nurses that work as a team to answer all phone calls, questions, and concerns about your child's medical issues. They’re able to answer many of these questions themselves, but for others, they’ll consult with one of our Providers to get you the best possible care advice.

All members of our clinical advice team have medical training, so they’re the only ones besides our Providers who can make telehealth video sick appointments via KidzDocNow (available 24 hours a day) or, if necessary, refer you to the Emergency Room. All the care advice they discuss with you is recorded into your electronic medical record and reviewed by a Provider. Because of those electronic medical records, we can access your information and treat you with the exact same great care at all three of our offices, or with anyone you talk to on the phone.

Our phones are monitored 24/7/365. If our offices are closed, you can still get through to a member of our clinical advice team. Just call, follow the prompts, and either our on-call team or our answering service will help you.