Pediatric Associates of Barrington

Office Information

Appointments

We have two offices, Barrington and Crystal Lake. We have multiple providers that rotate between the two offices. We do ask that you pick one office as your home base. This will allow us access to your child's medical chart for each visit. For continuity of care, we recommend that you schedule your well child appointments with the same provider whenever possible. We can schedule these appointments up to 3 months in advance. Sick visits will be scheduled with the provider available that day at your home office. We make every effort to be on time for your appointment and we ask that you extend the same courtesy. Please call if possible to notify us if you are running late for an appointment, as you might have to rescheduled to a different time. On occasion, we might be running late due to an emergency of unforeseen circumstances. Please understand the situation and realize we would do the same for your child.

Missed Confirmed Appointments

Please note that starting May 1, 2009, there will be a nominal charge for missed CONFIRMED appointments.  If you are unable to keep a scheduled appointment and you notify the office PRIOR to the appointment time, there will be no charge.

Scheduler

We are happy to be assigning a scheduler for physicals and rechecks.  She will be covering both offices.  If you are in need of an appointment, you will be transferred to the scheduler of the day. With this addition, we are striving to improve our scheduling process.

Saturday Appointments 

Saturday visits are for acute illnesses and emergencies only. If we have 2 providers that day, we schedule the appointments with the next available provider in consecutive order.

Telephone Care 

Pediatric Associates of Barrington is committed to providing our patients and families access to quality medical care every day and every hour of the day, 365 days a year.  Telephone care is the delivery of meaningful medical care over the telephone and often may replace and prevent an office visit.  Our staff provides telephone care for the management or consultation of immediate medical needs, adjustment of medications, treatment of chronic illness and assistance with normal growth, development, and behavioral concerns.

Telephone care that involves physician time, expertise and documentation of the medical care delivered is recognized as patient care.  The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) supports charging for telephone care under certain well-defined circumstances only.

Rest assured we will continue to provide the services of our office-hours nurse telephone line at no cost.  We also provide answers to the most commonly asked questions on our website www.pediatric-associates.net and in our handouts which you receive at your visits.  Of course, you are always welcome to call for an office appointment for your child to be seen in person at any time during our business hours.

As of January 19, 2009, Pediatric Associates will bill your health plan a nominal fee for specific types of phone calls between you and a physician.  You may be responsible for all or part of this fee, depending on your individual health plan coverage.  The specific situations are described in the following paragraph.  While there is no legal mandate requiring insurance carriers to adhere to AAP recommendations, it is considered a "good faith" gesture for them to do so, given that these recommendations are the current standard in medical care.

Specific circumstances for telephone charges:

1.  Calls for physician management of a new problem, including counseling, medical management, and coordination of care NOT resulting in an office visit within the next 24 hours.

2.  Calls for physician management about an existing problem for which the patient was not seen in a face-to-face encounter in our office in the previous 7 days and will result in a visit within 24 hours.

3.  Calls related to care plan oversight for patients with special needs in residential settings and/or those with a chronic disease who require physician supervision over a period of time during a calendar month.

Our primary goal is to continue to provide excellent pediatric care to your children.  We believe this new option gives us flexibility to do just that, and we look forward to continuing our relationship with you and your family, both in person, and on the telephone.