All Ages Pediatrics
About Us
We pledge to deliver the best service possible to our patients. Our goal is to be a user friendly clinic delivering personalized healthcare, while instilling success for our parents and children facing current healthcare challenges. We want to enhance your child’s health to gain them future successes, and we pride ourselves by using state-of-the-art medical practices. Our practice scope is standard, we see patients from birth to age 24 for “special needs.” Examples of this would be cerebral palsy, seizure disorders, etc….
Service
Our goal is to give you excellent medical care but also to do it in a compassionate, kind and pleasant manner. Managing numbers of patients to ensure the best possible service can be tricky; when your child becomes sick, we may not be able to see you immediately, but definitely plan to see you within 24 hours. To provide this service, we may have to close the practice to new patients at some point so that the current patients can still be seen in a reasonable time.
Patient Responsibilities
We do require a few things from our patient guardians. We strive for a family atmosphere where any age child should feel as safe as possible and their experience should not conflict with the way any family present is raising them. This means, we will not tolerate cursing, yelling or extreme behavior from any adult. This will result in immediate expulsion from the practice. We also expect you to be clothed in a manner that would be acceptable to anyone. That means no midriff exposure (belly), visible undergarments, halter tops or clothing with offensive language. Finally, we will be clean and promote good personal hygiene when we see you, therefore; we expect you to do the same, including not having offensive odors. We likely will refuse service in these situations and reserve the right to refuse service for other reasons. We will be considerate and courteous to you, and we expect patients and their guardians to be considerate and courteous to our employees as well.
Vaccine Schedule
We recommend following the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices schedule. This will be posted in the rooms and is the recommendation of the Center for Disease Control (CDC), and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). We recommend vaccines, and I firmly believe in them for many reasons. I personally have seen too many children in Iowa die, or be left brain damaged from vaccine preventable diseases. The biochemistry and immunology are sound behind them. They are not composed of water and we are stimulating the body to make a reaction. So, common side affects, while rare, are normal. There are only two exemptions allowed in Iowa. One is a medical exemption where I, as the physician, state that I believe the vaccine will cause harm to the child. I will not sign unless I believe it to be true in some specific circumstance. The second is a religious exemption that states that there is a conflict with a genuine and sincere religious belief. It further clarifies that this is in fact religious, and not based on philosophical, scientific, moral, personal or medical opposition. As you can probably gather, I do not sign many exemptions and am generally opposed to them. If you have vaccine concerns, I will be happy to discuss them. I have found that there is a lot of old, bad, and incorrect information about vaccines that continues to circulate. If you refuse vaccines, I will have you sign a refusal form and I will continue to promote vaccines at future physicals in the hopes that we can someday compromise.
Appointments
Your appointment is very important to us. You have the responsibility to arrive before your appoointment time. If late, you must understand that we will see you when we can, but we will not make people that arrived on time, wait longer for their scheduled appointment. Unexpected things occasionally interfere with plans but we expect you to notify us of a cancellations two hours prior to your scheduled appointment time or as soon as possible in the case of an emergent situation. By the same token, we will try to run on time as much as possible. Sometimes, going to the ER, hosptial or treating a very sick child in the office causes delays. We will try to manage those situations as best as we can in the given situation. In general, three no-shows in the year will result in a review of the chart and probable discharge from the practice. We will try to institute a reminder system but this does not change that it is your responsibility to appear for the appointment whether we remind you or not. The worst consequences of a cancelled appointment or no-show appointment are to another parent who is waiting in our practice. That’s the parent that had to go to the ER or seek another provider because we couldn’t get them in right away.
After Hours
Dial our office number. An answering service is available to answer your call. *After hours may require you to visit the ER.
Services
We plan to be able to provide medical records, physicals and immunization records on the day of the request or at the latest the next day. Medication refills are a different matter; please provide us 3-7 days in advance of running out of chronic medications.
When you call, be prepared to provide the following:
- the patients name and birth date
- the medication
- the dosage, way it’s given, and the how many times a day it is given
- the pharmacy you use
- and finally how many doses that you have left
Hospital Services
One person simply can not be on-call 24 hours a day and still be able to deliver the care that you deserve. All Ages Pediatrics currently cooperates in a shared call schedule with the other pediatric groups. This means another pediatrician may see you initially during a delivery or admission to the hospital. Unless I’m out of town, I should be notified and then resume care in the morning.
