If it is after hours and you have a true life-threatening emergency, CALL 911.
To Reach Our Practice
Main: (210) 804-2301
Fax: (210) 805-9523
Tips When Calling Our Office
1) Make the call yourself if at all possible. Relaying a message about your child’s situation through a third party may result in misleading information.
2) Identify yourself and give your child’s full name and age. Describe the condition in specific terms and be sure to state if the child was seen recently for the condition. Please remember, we like to know the specific condition/reason for the visit so we can schedule the appropriate amount of time for your appointment. This helps us ensure that we have enough time to answer all of your questions.
3) Have a pencil and paper ready when you call. Do not rely on remembering instructions – especially when you may be concerned or anxious.
4) Please have your pharmacy number available before you call in the event we need to call in a prescription.
5) If the staff is not immediately able to solve a non-urgent problem, your phone number will be taken and we will call you back between office patients. If you have an emergency, please alert our staff and someone will be paged immediately. We have a nurse on duty during “regular office hours” to answer parents’ questions. When necessary, the nurse will consult with one of the doctors.
6) If you are requesting a call back from the doctor we request to know the reason for the call back. The doctor may not call back until the end of the day, so it is often important for the nurse to call back before the doctor . The nurse can then determine if the call can wait until the end of the day. We do not want to get to the end of the day and realize when the doctor calls back, we really needed to see the patient that day. Also, knowing the nature of the phone call will allow the doctor to know how much time is needed for the call back. A phone call that will likely be more than 5 minutes will need to be scheduled for an appointment.
7) Call us, if at all possible, before rushing to the emergency room, so that the necessary arrangements can be made.
Telephone Advice
Call us anytime!
Many problems can be handled by phone without the necessity of an office visit. You should normally expect your call to be returned within an hour. On busy days, it might not be until the end of the morning clinic if you called in the AM or the end of the afternoon clinic if you called after lunch. If it is approaching 12:00 or 4:00, and you have not heard back from us, or if the condition is becoming more serious, please call our office back.
In the event of an emergency, please alert our staff and someone will be paged immediately. We have a nurse on duty during “regular office hours” to answer parents’ questions. When necessary, the nurse will consult with one of the doctors.
Our phones are rolled over from our answering service at 8:00 am Monday through Saturday. Monday through Friday, the answering service manages phone calls during our 12:30-1:30 pm lunch and again each evening at 4:30.
All parents with sick or injured children feel a sense of urgency to reach our office as soon as the phone lines open. This means that between 8:00-9:30am and at 1:30-2:00pm we receive a large volume of calls. If you are able to call during non-peak times you will experience shorter hold times and fewer busy signals.
We do have a call-notes message system. If you have a non-urgent need such as a prescription refill, billing inquiry or well-visit appointment request, please feel free to leave a message and someone will call you back.
After Hours Contact Information
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 would just like to speak to the doctor, there is always one on call. We rotate our call between the 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 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.
