New patient guide

Before your child’s scheduled appointment, you will receive a text message with details about the appointment, as well as a pre check-in registration form to complete prior to arriving. This registration includes demographic and insurance information. It also includes an age-appropriate questionnaire for parents to complete.

Healthy Kids Pediatric Group verifies and confirms all appointments on the schedule 2-3 days ahead of time and will reach out to you directly if any insurance issues are found.

It’s your appointment day! Once you arrive at the office, our front desk team will ask for any updated information, collect forms and co-payments, and enter your driver’s license and insurance card into our computer system. We will verify your contact information at every visit to make sure we can get in touch with you, just in case your phone number or email address has changed.

While you are waiting, our medical assistants (MAs) and providers are busy seeing other patients and preparing your exam room. Because we typically have multiple providers seeing patients at one time, you may not be called back into an exam room in the order you arrived or were checked in. If someone goes back before you, they are most likely seeing a different provider who’s on a different schedule.

We always try to be as fast and efficient as possible — however, we can’t always predict when other issues or even emergencies will arise. We want to give every patient the time necessary to make the best possible assessment and provide them with the best possible care. We’ll do our best to let you know if your provider is running behind, but feel free to ask for an update if it seems like you have been waiting for a while.

Once your child is brought back to the exam room, one of our MAs will get a complete set of vital signs (including height, weight, temperature, and blood pressure) and ask about their medical history. This information allows your provider to get a quick picture of what’s going on before they enter the room, especially for sick visits. If you filled out the pre-visit questionnaire before your appointment, we should already have all the information we need. (However, sometimes your provider may ask similar questions to pinpoint things more clearly.)

All of our MAs have medical training, so they will watch for any warning signs or “red flags” that come up when taking vitals and reviewing your child’s medical history. If they see any signs of concern — for instance, your child came in for cough and cold symptoms but is now wheezing and breathing rapidly — they’ll get an available provider into the room right away. Situations like this are one reason why you may sometimes have a longer-than-usual wait. We’ll skip over the appointment order when it’s necessary to safeguard the health and safety of one of our patients.

Once all of your child’s information has been gathered, the MA will leave the exam room and let your provider know you’re ready to be seen.

Your provider will review your child’s medical history and ask if you have any questions or concerns, then begin their exam for a well or sick visit. Once your provider has completed the exam (and made a diagnosis and recommended treatment for a sick visit), your child may need immunizations and/or additional testing or treatment in the office. If so, your provider alerts your MA, who will prepare and deliver whatever is needed to complete the appointment.

Once your child’s exam and treatment are complete, it’s time to head back to the front office to check out. (This is also an ideal time to make your next appointment!) At checkout, you can pick up any forms that need to be completed and/or any prescriptions or referrals printed out for you. If you have a balance due or are paying for the visit out of pocket, this is when you will make payment.

After you leave, your visit still isn’t complete — at least for us!

First, your provider completes what we call an “office encounter” by putting all notes and documentation into your child’s chart. Once these visit notes are complete, you can see a summary of them in your patient portal account. (The summary is usually available by the end of the day, but could take up to 2-3 days to appear on the portal for various reasons.)

Next, the office notes are reviewed by our posters — the members of our staff who attach charges to bills and make sure they’re correct — before our billers submit them to your insurance company. Our billers then follow the charges and update your account after payment is received.

We may not know until that time if certain charges or parts of your bill are covered by your insurance plan. If you still have a balance due, our billers will automatically charge your account (if you’ve signed up for AutoPay) or prepare and send you a paper bill.

There’s an important group of people you may not encounter in our office but speak to frequently on the phone or online — our Healthy Kids clinical advice team. These pediatric experts are available to address any questions or concerns you have about your child’s health. When necessary, they will consult with a provider directly to give you the best possible care advice.

All members of our clinical advice team have medical training, so they’re the only ones besides our providers who can schedule telehealth visits or refer you to the emergency room (if necessary). Any care advice they discuss with you is added to your child’s medical record, which all Healthy Kids locations can access.

We do everything we can to answer phone calls and messages during business hours, so please be patient. If you think your child needs to be seen quickly, please do not wait for a return call or message — schedule a same-day appointment by phone or online instead.