COVID-19 OFFICE POLICY UPDATE

Blog: What You Need To Know About Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Thank you for choosing Dr. Rosemary Bates as your health care provider. We have been in practice since 1999, and continually strive to deliver first-class comprehensive medical care in a warm and friendly environment. To this end, we have developed some office policies that will help you as you become familiar with our practice.

Please bring your completed new patient paperwork, along with your driver’s license and insurance card, to your appointment. The forms can be downloaded from the website. It helps us to stay on time if you arrive 15 minutes early to complete patient check-in.

It is helpful if you bring with you any pertinent medical records that will help us become familiar with you and your ongoing medical issues, so we can best assess and develop a treatment plan. Records may also be faxed to 469-467-0008 prior to your appointment.

Office Hours: Office hours are Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Established sick patients will be seen the same day for acute (sudden) onset problems. Phones will not be answered between noon and 1:30 p.m. daily. During this time you may leave a message, and your call will be returned as soon as possible.

New Patient Appointments: Currently we schedule new patient well exams with a physician’s assistant (PA) or nurse practitioner (NP). This is a comprehensive overview of your past medical history, past surgeries, family history, medications and allergies. Current complaints and issues are then discussed. We review all age-appropriate heart and cancer screenings. In addition, we may include fasting blood work (unless recent comprehensive labs are supplied), an EKG, hormone testing, bone mineral density and any other age-appropriate cardiac or cancer screenings. With your written authorization, we often request pertinent past medical records.

Prescription Refills: We do not normally handle prescription refills over the phone. Please ask your pharmacy to fax in a request for a prescription refill. Requests may be faxed to 469-467-0008. Please allow 24 hours from the time of receipt from the pharmacy to process the prescription. Generally, prescription refills will not be processed outside of normal business hours.

Referrals: If your insurance requires referrals to specialists, please give our office 48 hours’ notice to complete the referral.

Physician Emergency On-Call Policy: For emergencies outside of office hours, please call our office at 972-943-8597 for the doctor on call. In case of a life-threatening emergency, please call 911 or seek treatment at the nearest emergency room.

Walk-In Appointments: Our appointments are pre-scheduled. We will try to accommodate walk-in patients, but walk-ins are discouraged due to the long wait that will ensue. Please call and we will do our best to accommodate you.

Payment: At the time of your visit, you will be expected to provide payment in the amount of any co-payment required by your insurance plan, any unmet annual deductible amount where appropriate, and for any services that are not covered. For your convenience, we accept cash, check, credit cards and debit cards.

Form Completion: Please try to allow us 5 business days to complete forms. Because of the high volume of forms we are asked to complete, patients are required to pay a $15 fee.

Copying of Medical Records: Patients requesting copies of their medical records will be assessed a $20 fee for the first 20 pages and 50 cents a page thereafter. An authorization for release of information must be signed and submitted before any request for records will be processed.

No-Show Policy and Late Policy: If you are 15 minutes late for your appointment, we reserve the right to ask you to reschedule in the interests of other patients to be seen. If you do not cancel an appointment within 8 hours of the scheduled appointment, we reserve the right to charge a $25 fee.

Again, thank you for giving us the opportunity to help with your health care needs. We appreciate your trust in us.

Finally, if you have a problem or concern about our office, staff, treatment or plan, we ask that you bring it to our attention immediately and we will try to resolve the issue. If you feel your issue has not adequately been addressed, Dr. Bates can be reached after hours or on the weekend via her pager. Your safety, well-being and satisfaction are important to us.