Please call our office with questions…we are here for you!
The staff of Heritage Pediatrics is happy to welcome you to our practice. Our goal is to help make your visit to our office smooth and efficient. Please be sure to ask for more information about the following services when you call to make an appointment for your child.
Information on these services is alphabetically listed below. To read more about each topic, please click on the title/+ featured to the left of each service.
We are honored that you have chosen us as your child’s healthcare provider and hope that the information below helps provide patient education that compliments our in-office care.
Our Pediatric Services
Controlled substances, such as those prescribed to treat attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) must be hand written by your doctor each month. All requests should be made at least 3 business days in advance. Please make sure to have complete information when calling, e.g. drug name, strength and dose. Use of these drugs is carefully tracked and documented so accuracy is important. (Dr. Fitch and Dr. Tardy charge a $5 preparation fee for all refills.)
Frequently Asked Questions
Listed below are answers to frequently asked questions. To read more about each topic, please click on the title/+ featured to the right of each question. If additional questions arise, please call our office and speak with a staff member for more information.
Making an appointment is easy. Sick visits are usually scheduled the same day you call for an appointment. We prefer not to schedule sick visits ahead of time, as we know children often get well before that visit comes. Sometimes in the afternoon we will schedule a child for the next morning. However, if we have sick visit availability, we like to see the patient that day if they need to be seen. We will schedule non-sick, non-urgent visits ahead of time for visits like warts, acne, constipation, follow-up visits, etc. We prefer not to schedule these visits if one of the other doctors is out, so we make sure we have enough sick visit slots to see those patients who need to be seen that day. Well visits can be scheduled up to a year in advance. There is heavy demand for well visits from March to May and in July and August. If you need your child’s well visit during those months, please make your appointment several months in advance. Sports, school and camp physicals are included in well visits. We ask that you let us know in advance exactly your child is coming in for. This helps us to determine if it’s a chronic issue that may need more time allotted enabling us to minimize wait for you and other patients.
To change your appointment time, please call us as soon as possible. Cancelling wellness / physical exams requires 2 business days notice. This allows us time to schedule someone else that may be waiting to have an exam done. If your notice is not within 2 business days, a charge of $50 may be assessed to your account if we are unable fill that slot. For wellness / physical exams it may take several weeks before we can reschedule in busy months. We understand the need for doing these in a timely manner and for this reason we ask that you schedule the appointment in advance. We often keep a cancellation list in these busy months.
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.
For additional information about concerns arising after hours, please see our NEW after hours page.
We prefer that parents always bring in their children. However, urgent sick visits are sometimes needed when a parent is unavailable. A declaration of consent may be signed for your child if they are brought by another adult. It is best to be notarized. In many situations we may be able to accept non-notarized forms if we have a clear verbal consent for appointment.
To view and print this consent form, click here.
https://doxy.me/DrFitch
https://doxy.me/DrCrews
https://doxy.me/DrGibson
https://doxy.me/DrTardy
In 2007, the American Academy of Pediatrics fought for coding changes involving well visits where additional medical issues were addressed. This allowed for both well issues and sick issues to be addressed at the same time and usually under the same copay. Prior to this, it was expected that the family would have to schedule an appointment at a different time which would require coming to the office on a different day (missing more work and school) and paying another copay. However, now that most health plans don’t require a copay for well visits, when extra time is spent in a well visit, a copay or deductible may get charged to you. We don’t want you to not ask questions because you are worried about an extra charge. Most questions asked to us in a well visit are simple questions that don’t require much additional time in the visit. However, some questions do require more time (to come up with a treatment plan and potentially write prescriptions) than is allotted to cover in the preventative well visit.
Please know that our desire is to address your questions and try to make it more convenient for you. There may be a time when we will need to ask you to schedule another appointment to discuss these issues if time in our schedule doesn’t allow for this on that particular day. If you know beforehand you have additional medical questions that you would like to discuss at the visit, please let our front office know when you call to make the appointment so that we can schedule the appropriate amount of time for the visit on the day of your visit.
