Practice Policies

I regard the parent-child relationship with awe and respect.  A parent knows her/his child and has the ability to heal the child in ways that I, as a professional healer, will never be able to approximate. This sentiment informs my care and recommendations to my families.

As a member of the Littles Pediatrics community, we invite you to regard yourself, your child and us with respect as well. Policies around timeliness, appointments, phone/ email correspondence, payments and more are elaborated below to help guide your decisions around these topics.  These types of conscientious considerations affect other patients and families for whom we care and play a vital role in maintaining the health and sustainability of the practice as a whole.

Please carefully review each of the points below. This is a very small practice, so many of the policies may be different than those found at a traditional medical office. Familiarity with the practice policies will help you decide if the practice is a good fit for you, and will help us avoid surprises should you join the Littles Pediatrics community. Please feel free to email us with questions, concerns or requests for clarification!

Services Offered
We offer primary medical care for infants, children and adolescents (newborn to 18 years old). We see children for well child exams, sick visits, sports/camp physicals, and preventative medical care. We offer vaccinations and newborn screens. When indicated, we perform procedures like wart removal, suture removal and nebulizer treatments. Simple lab tests like urinalysis, urine pregnancy tests and rapid strep tests are also available.

Outside of the office, we offer home visits for newborns and have privileges at Randall Children’s Hospital at Legacy Emanuel.

Schedule of Well Child Check Appointments
These important visits encompass an assessment of your child’s growth and development, your child’s health and exam, vaccinations, time to discuss preventative health care topics, and a chance for us to celebrate, acknowledge, and nurture your child!
The visits are scheduled according to your child’s age and are as follows:

Office Hours
Dr. Chris sees patients on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays by appointment only.
Newborn home visits by special arrangement

Scheduling Appointments
Please visit the Online Scheduling page if you are an established patient. The scheduling program will guide you through the process step by step. If you experience difficulties, please contact us.

Same day appointments are available for established patients! Please see the scheduling page for details!

Scheduling for Multiple Children
Every child is a special individual and deserves his or her own appointment during which he or she receives our undivided attention. Please join us in honoring your child in this way! If you have multiple children and would like to have each child seen one after the other, no problem! Simply schedule them in adjacent slots online. In general, we do not recommend this for well child checks because it may be hard for little ones to stay in one place for two hours in a row!  However, if you live far from the office or have twins, we are happy to accommodate you.
Occasionally, you may have an appointment for one of your children and another of your little ones becomes ill, too. If you would like us to see your other child on the same day, please let us know as soon as you get to the office so we can discuss our options. If there is an open appointment time right after the first child’s visit, we can fit your other child into that slot. If there is an open appointment later in the day or the next day, we may agree to have you come back. If there are no openings and we feel the other child needs to be seen urgently, we may decide to squeeze him or her in with the first child’s appointment. We would like to avoid this scenario when possible, however, because it compromises both children’s appointments, allowing less time for connection, discussion, creating an individualized care plan, teaching and healing! Please be prepared to pay for the additional child’s visit (self pay or co-pay/ deductible according to your insurance).

Timeliness
When you schedule an appointment with us, we dedicate that time to you and your child. Please arrive on time to enjoy our full visit together! If you arrive early and we are still with another patient, please wait outside or visit one of the many local shops in the building or area.

Late Policy
As stated above, the time scheduled for your appointment is dedicated to you and your child. If you cannot avoid arriving late, please call us so we don’t worry about you! We can discuss our options by phone or when you arrive. Depending on the length of the scheduled visit and the time until the next appointment, we may decide to proceed with the appointment. However, the appointment must end on time so we can continue with the day’s schedule! If we decide to reschedule for a different day, this will be considered a cancellation and you will be charged a $75 cancellation fee.

Cancellation Policy
In the event you need to cancel your child’s appointment, please call us at least 24 hours in advance so we can offer your time to another child. If you do not notify us at least 24 hours beforehand, you will be charged a $75 cancellation/no show fee.

Annual Fee
At Littles Pediatrics, we strive to offer our patients and families exceptional care and services of the highest quality. Unfortunately, some of the services are not covered by health insurance carriers, and choosing to offer high quality, individualized, and un-rushed care means we are choosing quality of care for your child over quantity of income for the doctors. The annual fee helps to keep the practice running and to subsidize the services listed below:
No waiting. Dedicated appointments. Un-rushed office experiences. Your appointments are reserved especially for you and your child. We do not overbook or double book appointments. We respect your time, so your appointments are on time. We purposely offer longer appointment times so the focus will be on your child, not the clock. There are no "I saw the doctor for only five minutes, and I still don't know what to do or what is going on" type of experiences at Littles.
Phone consultation with your doctor. When the occasion arises for results and interpretation of diagnostic tests, arrangement of consultations with specialists, follow-up of an existing problem, or just answering questions about your care, you and your doctor get to speak with each other directly.
Email communication with your doctor. If you have a short question that does not require a patient visit, if you need clarification of an aspect of your child’s care plan, if you have a suggestion, or if you need to update us on a matter relevant to your child’s health care (like a note on your child’s visit with a specialist or a change in your child’s insurance), you can drop us an email!
24/7 access to your doctor for urgent needs. That’s right. We are available to our patients for urgent needs around the clock. Please read the urgent needs access note on this page for more details.
Creative and innovative care. From the child-centered and imaginative interior design of the office with its hand-crafted play areas and interactive, magical furniture, to the child-centered, creative family activities offered outside of office hours, Littles Pediatrics offers unique, enriching experiences that set the practice apart from all the rest!

Fee schedule:
You may pay monthly or yearly. Payments for the entire year are encouraged and are discounted as a courtesy.

Payment Policies

Self Pay Patients
Patients without insurance are offered a 30% discount if payment is made at the time of service. Payments may be made in cash, check or credit card.
Outstanding balances for self pay patients follow the same procedure as outstanding balances for insured patients. Please see details below.
On occasion, we may consider bartering some services. Please contact us via email if you would like to propose this kind of alternative payment arrangement.

Insured Patients
Littles Pediatrics, PC is contracted with the following insurance carriers:

Important note: Please contact your insurance carrier to ensure we are contracted with your specific insurance plan. It is your responsibility to ensure your visit with our doctors will be covered by your insurance, if that is what you are expecting.

We are not contracted with any OHP plan.

Providence EPO
Cigna
Regence Blue Cross Blue Shield
Pacific Source
Multiplan/ PHCS
First Choice Health Network/ Healthcare Direct
First Health- Group Health only
Coventry Health Plans
ODS/ Moda
HealthNet
United Healthcare
Aetna
UMR

Remember to bring the following items to your visit!
insurance card
co-pay or deductible (cash, check and credit card accepted)

Please note that insurance coverage varies greatly from carrier to carrier! Call your insurance carrier before coming to the office to ensure your visit will be covered if that is your expectation. If indicated, we may need to order lab or other diagnostic testing. We highly recommend that you call your insurance to ensure coverage for these tests as well.  You are responsible for understanding and abiding by the terms to which you agreed when you signed your contract with your insurance carrier!

Outstanding balances such as deductibles and co-pays or co-insurances are the responsibility of the insured patient or guarantor and are to be paid in accordance with the signed agreement. 
If a balance remains on your account after we receive a payment from you or your insurance company, we will notify you via email or written mail at the beginning of the following month. The outstanding balance will be due upon receipt and may be paid to me by cash, check, or credit card.
In the deeply undesired circumstance that a balance remains outstanding with no payment arrangement for over 2 months, the account will begin to accrue a $20.00 late fee for each additional month that the balance is not paid. If the balance is not paid and/or we have not arranged arrangements for payment after 120 days, we must refer the account to a collections agency. Should this most unlikely situation occur, please be aware that you will be billed for collection-related costs and any late fees. 
Additionally, a fee of $25.00 will be charged for any returned check.

Prescription Refill Policy
Handling prescription refills is a surprisingly time-consuming task! Since I, Dr. Chris, am the only staff member of Littles Pediatrics and spending more time with my patients is of a higher priority than spending more time on the phone and fax machine with the pharmacy, I will not be able to fill prescriptions outside of office visits. In light of this, I ask you to join us in being mindful about your child’s medication needs. For medications taken daily, I will prescribe enough refills to last at least until your next visit. If the medications are running low, it is likely time for a follow up visit! For medications that are needed only during a certain season (like allergy medications) or as needed (like headache medicines), I invite you to be alert to when you are running low and make an appointment to address both the medications and the condition for which the medications are recommended. If all else fails and you end up needing a refill outside of an office visit, call our office line with your child’s name, date of birth, the drug name, dosage, and pharmacy phone number. You will be charged a $15 administrative fee for this service.

Phone and Email Correspondence
One major difference between Littles Pediatrics and a more traditional medical practice is correspondence with your doctor.  By offering our patients direct contact with us, we hope to offer them better, more personalized care by a doctor who knows them well. In general, we may call our patients to check in with how they are feeling after a sick visit or to discuss abnormal lab results. We tend to use email to correspond with our patients about less sensitive information like normal lab results or billing questions.

Please keep in mind that I am the only one answering phones and returning messages. When you call, I may be with another patient. I will make every effort to get back to you as soon as possible.

In case of emergency, always call 911 immediately!

Please read the guide below to decide how to proceed with contacting Dr. Chris.

Routine matters (simple questions about your child’s health or care plan, inquiries about test results, changes in insurance plan, billing questions, appointment cancellations)
Please feel free to email me any time with routine matters. My email service is HIPAA compliant and your health information is secure. If email is not available to you, you may call the office number to leave a message, or, if I am not with another patient, speak with me right away. I check email and phone messages frequently, and will usually get back to you on the same day during business hours or the next business day.
Please note that email is NEVER appropriate for urgent medical issues. For these, please call the office or urgent line.
Many insurance plans have a nurse hotline that you can call to answer a variety of health related questions. If you have a health question and want to speak with a nurse right away, please take advantage of this service. If the nurse feels your question is urgent, the nurse will advise you to go to the emergency room or to contact us.

Urgent matters (those questions that fall in between being able to wait a little for an answer and going to urgent care or the emergency room right away)
There may be an occasion when you need to call me, even if it means interrupting me from work or personal time. In this case, please call the number for urgent calls provided to you when you establish care. This is urgent cell phone number at which you can reach one of me 24 hours a day, 7days a week. Please use this privilege appropriately.

In the rare occasion that we are unable to answer or get back to you promptly and you feel the urgent matter may have developed into a medical emergency, do not hesitate to call 911!

Grounds For Termination of Patient-Physician Relationship
A physician may terminate a relationship with a patient at any time by giving 30 days notice during which the physician is responsible only for responding to urgent medical matters. Dr. Chris will reserve this action for patients who demonstrate a lack of respect for themselves and the practice by missing appointments repeatedly, disregarding the practice’s stated policies, or acting in a way that is deceptive, disrespectful, or dishonest. By definition this will be a small practice, so it is important that those who are seen here are invested in the relationship with their physician and act in a manner that demonstrates the same.