Flu Vaccines
Flu vaccines are recommended for all children now ages 6 months to 18 years old. It’s especially important that children with chronic illnesses get the flu shot. So if your child uses an inhaler, has heart disease or another illness (diabetes, cancer, cystic fibrosis) make sure you’ve called for an appointment.

For Needle Phobic Children, we now stock FluMist, which is a flu vaccine that is a nose spray instead of a shot. If you have to pull your child off the ceiling or out from under the exam table when the nurse comes in to give shots, this might be a good option for you.It isn’t for everyone though, so talk to the provider about if your child is eligible to receive this type of vaccine.

Synagis Shots
Synagis Shots will be coming in soon for the ex-premies in the practice. If your baby was born this year (or maybe last) earlier than 36 weeks gestation, call our office and talk to the nurse, Regan to see if he qualifies for monthly synagis shots. These shots help prevent RSV, an illness which can be devastating to ex-premies.

School Physicals
By now you’ve figured out that we have to book quite a ways in advance for school physicals. If you know your child has a winter or spring sport coming up, now is the time to schedule his check-up. We book 6-9 months out, so call now for an appointment.

Hib Vaccine
The Hib vaccine shortage continues and we are still not giving this vaccine to healthy children between 12 and 15 months old. We’ll let you know when that changes.

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Office Changes:

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We are in the midst of implementing a few changes in how our office runs. You may notice the changes or may not. We hope they’ll serve you well. Our intention with both changes is to continue to push the limits and provide better and better care for patients while making things as convenient as possible for parents.

Because the volume of calls has increased so dramatically over the past year, we have realized we need to implement an after hours nurse triage answering service. That means if you call for medical advice after hours, you will soon be speaking to a nurse who will dispense medical advice. Over the years we have realized that it is rare that a patient actually needs a physician’s advice and guidance after hours. The majority of calls we receive at 1, 2, 3 and 4 in the morning could easily be answered by a nurse. By switching the primary telephone calls to the nursing staff, the physicians will have all their brain power and energy available for emergencies in the hospital and high risk deliveries that we need to attend in the night. But the quality of advice you receive will not go down, and there is a chance you’ll have a happier person answering the phone call!

We’re contracting with Rainbow Children’s Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio to provide the after hours service. We will still be available for the nurses if our expertise is needed and we’ll be aware of all the phone calls placed after hours.

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Lab Services:

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You may hear us talk more about lab options than you have before. Quest Lab on Hammond Lane here in Plattsburgh has the ability to provide results directly to our patient records instead of needing paper copies of requisitions and paper copies of results. That means errors will be minimized when we order labs and there is no chance a result could be posted to the wrong chart. Although those errors are rare, we have the technology now to make the errors non-existant so we’re happy to partner with Quest.

Stat labs will continue to be sent through CVPH as well as some patient specimens because of insurance company contracts.