The purpose of this page is to help you with problems which could occur when our office is closed and to help you distinguish between what is an urgent problem and what can be safely managed at home. While one of the physicians of Heritage is always available after hours, the purpose of this service is to help you when there is an urgent matter which can’t otherwise be resolved. Please look over this page before having the on-call physician paged to determine if a call is needed. The following information is divided into topics based on symptoms. The on-call physician is unable to schedule appointments for your child.
Once phones are rolled over to our after hour answering service, press 0 for an operator and you can have the doctor on call paged. If you press 1 you will get the Methodist nurse help line (22-NURSE). They do a wonderful job of answering questions. However, if the wait is too long or you need to speak to one of the Heritage physicians, there is always one on call. If you hear our “in office” voice message, or the phone just rings with no answer, you can reach our physicians directly by calling (303) 715 – 6019. We rotate our call between the five Heritage Pediatrics doctors during the week and rotate call each weekend.
If it is after hours and you have a true life-threatening emergency, CALL 911. If it is after hours and you have an emergency that you know will require an emergency room visit, go to Methodist Children’s Hospital Emergency Room in the medical center area or Christus Children’s Hospital in downtown San Antonio and call us on your way. If the nurse help line instructs you to go to the closest Emergency Room (again call us on the way if you know you need to go) or you are wondering if you should take your child in, please call and have the doctor on call paged. We can often talk through medical conditions on the phone. We may give you home care instructions and follow up the next day in the office or with a phone call. We may instruct you to do a few things and call you back in an hour or two. If we think you do need to go to the Emergency Room, we will call ahead and let them know you are coming. If we think your child needs to be seen, but does not need an Emergency Room, we may direct you to an after hours Pediatric Urgent Care (shorter wait and lower co-pays). Due to HIPPA regulations, we don’t have correspondence with the nurses at the 22-NURSE help line. If you speak with the nurse one evening or on a weekend and you want us to know about the phone call, please contact our office the next business day.