New-patient appointments and physicals: 40 minutes
Routine follow-up and urgent appointments: 20 minutes
Physicals and new-patient or routine follow-up appointments are scheduled up until 3:20 p.m. each day. Later appointment times are reserved for urgent appointments. If there are circumstances that require you to have a late afternoon follow-up appointment, please let us know, and we will try to accommodate you; however, we try to reserve those appointment times for patients with same-day urgent needs.
Please help us serve you better by scheduling your physicals and routine follow-up appointments as far ahead as your schedule allows. We will gladly schedule appointments up to 12 months in advance.
Pre-College Physicals
Please try to schedule these physicals as early as possible, preferably in the spring of your high school senior year. Although we will make every attempt to accommodate your needs, we have difficulty doing so at the last minute. Physicals require at least 40 minutes with each patient, as well as time to complete paperwork.
Urgent Appointments
Please call the office first thing in the morning if you have an urgent problem and feel you need a same-day appointment. We reserve appointment times specifically to accommodate your urgent needs, and, under most circumstances, one of the physicians or the physician assistant will be able to see you on the same day.
Patients enrolled in the MD Connect or MD Connect Plus plans have the benefit of seeing their identified physician for same-day appointments on the physician’s scheduled days in the office.If you call with an urgent problem at the end of the day, it will be much more difficult for us to accommodate your needs. In those circumstances, we will do our best to offer you an appointment on the following day.
Please be advised that, in general, we feel your medical problems are best evaluated and managed with an office visit, and we do not routinely call in prescriptions without seeing you first.
Based on the information you provide us over the phone, there may be times when the physician feels it is more medically appropriate for you to be seen in the emergency room. In this case, the physician will refer you to the emergency room and then contact the emergency room physician to coordinate your care.
Pre-Surgical Evaluation Appointments
Prior to surgery, a pre-operative physical is often necessary. We encourage you to ask your surgeon at the time you schedule your surgery if you require a preoperative evaluation, as the surgeon’s office may not make it clear that such physicals need to be performed prior to surgery.
Our office is happy to perform these evaluations; however, your appointment must take place at least two weeks prior to your scheduled surgery. Advance notice is necessary to ensure there is ample time for any additional cardiac or pulmonary testing that may be necessary prior to surgery. Please schedule your pre-surgical evaluation as soon as you schedule your surgery.
Running Behind Schedule
We know that your time is valuable, and we make every effort to run on time or as close to on-time as possible. The office runs on-time most consistently with the first appointment of the morning (8 a.m.) or the first appointment after lunch (1 p.m.).
However, the needs of patients on any given day are highly variable, and we admit that at times, the office may run somewhat behind schedule. Please understand that our goal is to provide comprehensive care and to ensure that each patient’s needs are met at each visit, and this makes running on time at all times impossible.
On the rare occasion that a physician is running more than 45 minutes behind schedule on the day of your appointment, we will make every effort to contact you. You should also feel free to call us one hour ahead of your scheduled appointment time to find out how close to on time the office is running.