Needham Pediatrics Fall 2023 Newsletter

Fall 2023 Newsletter

Hi everyone. With school back in session, we are all ready for the fall. Here are some office updates:

1. Flu Vaccine: Flu vaccine has arrived. You can call the front desk to schedule an appointment for a flu clinic visit for your child. Your child may also receive the vaccination at any upcoming office visit or well child check. Siblings can tag along to these visits for flu vaccination, but please notify the front desk in advance so we can schedule any add-on vaccination visits appropriately.
2. COVID Testing: We continue to send all COVID testing for symptomatic patients and asymptomatic, exposed patients to Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH) with average turnaround time typically around 24hrs. We are now using Quest Laboratories for travel testing/school entry testing with turnaround time between 1-3 days.
3. Appointment Availability: We are planning to increase our capacity for same day sick visits this fall and winter. Due to the potential for very high demand for office visits during this time, we may not always be able to guarantee these same day sick visits on very busy days, especially for less urgent matters. In cases where our schedule is full, we can typically offer you an appointment on the following day. More urgent medical concerns are always triaged by our phone nurse team, so they can be appropriately addressed in a timely manner - either booking an appointment at our office or referring to the emergency department if needed.
4. MyChart: Please remember to only send non-urgent messages via the MyChart messaging application. This application is not to be used for any same day/urgent issues. We recommend you call our phone nurse line for any of these types of concerns that require a faster response time.
5. Telehealth: We continue to offer telehealth services within our practice. We wanted to make sure everyone is aware that insurance carriers may soon be making changes to your coverage for telehealth services. Please check with your individual insurer for any updates in your coverage prior to booking a telehealth appointment. Additionally, due to changes in state and federal regulations, we are now more limited in our ability to provide out-of-state telehealth care for both medical and behavioral health visits. Our front desk staff may review your location status prior to booking any telehealth appointment to make sure we are in compliance with these statutes.
6. Behavioral Health: We have hired another behavioral health clinician to our team, Parker Monks, LICSW. She can provide both in-person and virtual behavioral health support to our patients and families. Please contact us if you are interested in learning more about scheduling an appointment with Parker. We are very proud to now have four behavioral health clinicians working at Needham Pediatrics, as we know how valuable their services are to our community!

Thanks for reading. As always, feel free to reach out if you have any questions or concerns.