Interesting New Policy at My Drs. Office

[Pigeon]

Insane. I'd find a new pediatrician that was family-friendly ASAP.

 

[roseprincess]

I haven't had a chance to read most of the responses, but I never heard of the policy the OP mentioned. I would be very upset by that policy . I have 2 special needs kids-actually special needs twins, so if one had to go in for a sick appt, the other one would be just coming for the ride, since I wouldn't be able to find a sitter at the last minute for the child that wasn't sick. When my kids were younger(toddler age), when dd was sick, sometimes I would call my dh to come home from work so I can bring her in and he would watch the other child. This didn't happen often, just once in a while.
If I am scheduling for my twins well exams, I usually schedule back-to-back appts. IE, our peds office would schedule dd at 10am and and ds at 10:15am with the same doctor. Our peds practice knows my twins since birth,so they know this is how we schedule them for well exams, follow-up exams.
Our peds practice just recently(about 2yrs. ago) expanded the waiting room to accomodate all the kids, and some of the kids that come in are twins, triplets. They also expanded more exam rooms and made some of them bigger than they were. They also have separate waiting rooms for well kids and sick kids- our peds practice has had the separate waiting rooms for quite awhile like this.


Rosemarie

 

[UnderTheMistletoe]

Could it be becuase of the privacy regulations and HIPPA?

Both my parents are doctors and I have worked in their offices in the past. They both had private 18-and-older-except-by-special-circumstances practices. While most children are well-behaved, there are those who are not.

I can clearly remember one father bringing his two children and three of their friends in for his appointment. He left them in the waiting room becuase he didn't want the children in the exam room. It was no big deal visit as we saw him every month the day before his RXs ran out I'll lave it to you to figure out which type he was refilling so regularly. As soon as he got out of the waiting room, the kids became a ghouls. They were terrors. Absolute terrors. When I knocked on his exam room door to ask him if it would be all right if the children joined him in there (it was a large room and it was better then them upsetting the other patients), he told me to, "Deal with it." Never in my life...

While I can understand the physician's reasoning as it is a professional medical pratice, it does seem odd to me not to provide some measure for the parents to provide care of the other sibling(s) when it's a Pediatric practice. We don't live in a country where the norm is a single-child family.

I will be interested to see if this stays in place if it is an arbitrary thing on the physician's part and not a Fedral mandate.

 

[ceiligh1]

Having worked in medical clinics I think they might be doing this for one of two reasons:
1. They have had injuries or missed diagnosis due to children running, screaming and playing with no parent doing anything about it.
2. They dont want to get off of their schedule with a tag-a-long no appointment visit. Where the parent has the Dr. also look at a sibling who just happens to be there. While it usually doesnt take very long for them to look say 5 min. THey then have to get the chart have the patient checked into whatever billing system they use and chart on that patient as well as the origional one. This adds to the wait time.

I have only one son so this would not be an issue for me yet. I am not sure how I would feel. I have watched peoples children for them while they were with the dr for another child at the clinic, even while they themselves were having a gyno exam. I guess I would want to find someone I know to watch my child instead of having someone I dont know take them away even if they are employed at my dr office.

 

[Stitchfans]

Like others said. I would look for a new dr. That is so wrong for them to expect you to have to pay the added expence of a sitter. Plus the head ache of finding a sitter.

 

[aprilgail2]

I would be fine with it since my daughter is and only will be an only child...plus I can't stand when we are in the Dr's waiting room and someone comes in with 3 and 4 kids when only one is sick and the other 3 are running all over the place in the waiting room. The waiting room is not that big and when people bring siblings it limits seating and you end up standing up holding your sick child in your arms since all the healthy siblings are sitting in the chairs that should be for the patients. I can see how it would be a problem for people with more than one kid but I would personally change to a Dr that had that rule if there was one around here.