We are pleased to have you as a patient in our practice! We invite your feedback on any ways we might improve our care of you and your family. Following is a list of helpful general information about how our practice functions.

PHYSICIAN ASSISTANTS

Patients in our practice are assigned to a Physician. Please verify with your HMO/PPO that the Physician you see here is the one registered as your Primary Care Provider (PCP) with your HMO/PPO. Even if you have seen a Physician Assistant often, you should still make an effort to see your Physician regularly. A Physician must see you every third visit. Physician Assistants will most often be assigned to see patients for acute/urgent needs, but they may also provide routine services, such as physical exams and PAP smears. We have complete confidence in our Physician Assistants’ skills and commend their services to you for your medical care needs.

COMPLETE/ANNUAL PHYSICAL EXAMS

It is our recommendation that all patients have regular Complete Physical Exams (Annual Screening/Preventative Visit, etc.) about every 1-2 years. It is your responsibility to verify that your insurance will reimburse preventative visits if you are scheduled for such. Be advised that some insurances routinely do not cover preventative visits (Medicare & some Blue Cross plans especially).

MEDICATIONS

Please bring your medications, (including prescription, regularly-used over-the-counter, and herbal/vitamin preparations) to your visits. It is a good idea to computerize a list of your medications and any allergies you may have and keep it updated by bringing a copy to your visits. Wallet-sized cards are available to keep track of medications/allergies. Please use pencil.

REFILL REQUESTS

Refill requests should be made with at least three business days worth of medication in reserve. You may request refills online or on our telephone refill voicemail system which our front office staff can guide you to when you call. Please do not call within 24 hours of a routine refill request to “see if it’s been done.” We will handle it and will contact you if the prescribing provider feels that it is not appropriate to refill the medication in question for some reason. It is good practice to call your pharmacy to ensure that your refill is ready for pick-up. Medication refills will not be phoned in after hours or on weekends.

NO SHOW/CANCELLATION POLICY

Failures to present at the time of a visit (“No-Shows”) will be recorded in patients’ charts. If three such events occur in your chart, you may be asked to find a new provider, as it is unfair to schedule and then to not appear for office time which another patient in need might use. Additionally, if you will not be able to make your scheduled appointment, we request 24 hours advanced notice. There will be a $25.00 charge for appointments cancelled or broken without 24 hours notice.

PAYMENT AT TIME OF SERVICE

Payment or Copay due is expected at the time of service. This is expressed in the information your insurance company will have sent you. With some insurances, copays are not due with certain preventative or procedural (surgical) visits. For simplicity and for your convenience, we have therefore elected to collect copays after visits. Please be prepared to pay at the time of service so that this policy need not change. We also accept Visa and MasterCard for payments.

LAB RESULTS

If you have labwork done, please ask your provider at the time of the visit when to expect to get your results. Usual turnaround time for routine bloodwork, X-Ray, and ECG/MRI/CAT Scan studies is about 2 weeks. Please do not call for results sooner than 2 weeks from the time the studies were completed unless you understood these studies to have been ordered urgently (STAT), as some tests take longer than others to return, and we would like to be able to communicate all your results to you at once.

HOSPITALIZATION

We admit our patients to Wilkes-Barre General Hospital and Mercy Hospital, Wilkes-Barre. Our Geisinger patients may elect to either be admitted to our service at Mercy Hospital, Wilkes-Barre or to the staff Hospitalist (a doctor who cares only for hospitalized patients) at Geisinger Hospital Wyoming Valley.

ON-CALL COVERAGE

We share on-call night/weekend coverage with Dr. Kurt Maas. If you are hospitalized at Wilkes-Barre General or Mercy Wilkes-Barre Hospitals on our service, one of our doctors or Dr. Maas will see you each day you are hospitalized. We rotate our hospital coverage daily during the week and one doctor will see patients over the weekends (Fri/Sat/Sun). Calls regarding the care of a hospitalized patient should be addressed to the doctor “on call for the hospitals” as they will be most familiar with that patient’s medical condition up to the minute.

E-MAIL WITH PATIENTS

We offer the secure (password-protected) web connection service of RelayHealth (formerly Healinx), if you wish to communicate with your provider online (for follow-up on a problem or to ask a simple question). Please do not expect an immediate response online, as we check our E-mail periodically (every 1-3 days). Requests for visits, prescription refills, and referral requests may all be securely sent to us online.

ELECTRONIC PRESCRIBING

RXNT is a software product that enables our Physicians to prescribe medications, access a wide variety of drug reference information, and view formulary information through the use of a Palm OS®-based handheld device and the Internet. RXNT enables physicians to securely access and send prescription information to pharmacies anytime, anywhere. Use of RXNT improves the accuracy of recorded information and eliminates handwriting-related medication errors. Your prescription is securely send via internet fax to your pharmacy’s secure fax machine.

REFERRALS

Referrals for tests and visits or procedures with specialists may be required with many insurance types, especially HMOs. It is the patient’s responsibility to obtain any necessary referral forms before such visits or procedures. This may be done by phone or e-mail to our office or by seeing our referral secretary at the time of your visit.