Policies

Appointments can be scheduled by calling our office at 571-379-4246 or by visiting our patient portal.  We have same-day appointments for most visits, including well-checks.   Please call early in the day to allow us time to appropriately treat your child.   It is also helpful to inform our schedulers of any medical conditions or special circumstances when making the appointment.  This allows us to allot the needed time.

To help our office function as efficiently as possible, we require 24 hours notice to cancel an appointment.  Please let our office know as soon as possible if you are unable to keep your scheduled appointment.  There is a charge for appointments missed without proper notice.

Welcome to our new patients and families.  We are excited to meet you.  It is helpful to schedule a well-child check to get to know your child, but we are happy to help when sick as well.  You will need to verify that we participate with your insurance  and change the PCP if needed.  It is helpful to have your child's records sent to our office before their appointment if possible.  We can also request them after you appointment. 

To expedite registration, you may enroll your family in our patient portal and complete all needed registration paperwork before your visit.  This is helpful even for same-day appointments.

To your first appointment, please bring:

• A current insurance card
• A credit card to place on file with our office
• An updated vaccine record and
• Any needed paperwork needing completion. 

Our knowledgeable clinic staff is here to answer any clinical questions you may have.  During our office hours, calls to our main office number, 571-379-4246, are directed to the clinical staff and clinicians if needed.  Messages are primarily handled through our Klara app.  We typically use Klara to reply to messages as it is easy and convenient.  We can also respond more quickly using the Klara app.  Our clinicians generally return phone calls at the end of the morning clinic session or in the evenings.  Please remember that our priority are the patients in our office.  

You can also send a secure e-mail message to our providers using the Patient Portal.  Providers often return messages during the day between patients if time permits.

If you have an urgent medical issue after our clinic hours, please call our main office number at 571-379-4246.  Follow the prompts to be connected to the on-call provider.  They will determine the best course of action for you and your child.  Please be respectful of our doctors family time and only call for truly urgent matters.

For chronic conditions, we will be more than happy to refill prescriptions. Please contact your pharmacy and ask them to fax us a refill request, or you may leave a prescription refill request using the Klara app or the patient portal.  We will make every effort to refill medications in a timely fashion, but please allow up to three (3) working days for your refill requests. 

Please note that chronic conditions like Asthma and ADHD require routine follow-up care in our office.  If your child is due for their follow-up or preventative care, we may need to schedule these visits prior to refilling prescriptions and can address your medication needs at that time.  This is especially true for ADHD stimulant medications that have special guidelines from the Drug Enforcement Agency regarding their use.  

For the safety of your child, Bristow Pediatrics does not generally phone in antibiotic prescriptions.

If your child is sick enough to require an antibiotic, we highly encourage for he or she to first be examined. 

Test results are communicated with the patient's parent or guardian in the manner they prefer.  Routine test results are sent to the Klara app after reviewed by the clinician.  Results can also be given over the phone or mailed to the patient's primary address.  Some test results may require an office visit so that Dr. Dolan and our team may discuss the results and develop a care plan with you and your child. 

Medical Records from our office must be requested in writing by a parent or guardian. There is a nominal charge for medical records according to our financial policy . Shot records can be faxed or mailed at parents request at no charge. 

Our office is committed to ensuring patients' privacy and is HIPAA compliant.

We work hard to not overuse antibiotics.

We educate families on appropriate use of antibiotics, but follow evidence-based guidelines and don’t automatically treat ear pain or a green snotty nose with antibiotics.

We do not routinely prescribe antibiotics over the phone as we do not believe that is good medicine. We will prescribe an antibiotic when we believe it is an appropriate treatment.

Efficiency through the use of technology

You will be encouraged to consult our website, register for and use our patient portal, and effectively use automated reminders for appointments and for routine care/immunizations that are due..

As medical professionals, we feel very strongly that vaccinating children on schedule with currently available vaccines is absolutely the right thing to do for all children and young adults. We are making you aware of these facts not to scare you or coerce you, but to emphasize the importance of vaccinating your child. We are more than willing to discuss any questions you may have about vaccines, but do require all new patients to our practice to adhere to the vaccination schedule endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)

We firmly believe in the effectiveness of vaccines to prevent serious illness and to save lives.

• We firmly believe in the safety of our vaccines.
• We firmly believe that all children and young adults should receive all of the recommended vaccines according to the schedule published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).
• We firmly believe, based on all available literature, evidence, and current studies, that vaccines do not cause autism or other developmental disabilities.
• We firmly believe that thimerosal, a preservative that has been in vaccines for decades and remains in some vaccines, does not cause autism or other developmental disabilities.
• We firmly believe that vaccinating children and young adults may be the single most important health promoting intervention we perform as health care providers, and that you can support as parents/caregivers.

The recommended vaccines and the schedule of administration are the results of years and years of scientific study and data-gathering on millions of children by thousands of our brightest scientists and physicians.

The vaccine campaign is truly a victim of its own success. It is precisely because vaccines are so effective at preventing illness that we are even discussing whether or not they should be given. Because of vaccines, many of you have never seen a child with polio, tetanus, whooping cough, bacterial meningitis, or even chickenpox, or known a friend or family member whose child died of one of these diseases. Such success can make us complacent or even lazy about vaccinating. But such an attitude, if it becomes widespread, can only lead to tragic results.

Over the past several years, many people in Europe have chosen not to vaccinate their children with the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine after publication of an unfounded suspicion (later retracted) that the vaccine caused autism. As a result of under-immunization, there have been small outbreaks of measles and several deaths from complications of measles in Europe over the past several years. The United States experienced a record number of measles cases during 2019, with 1282 cases from 31 states reported to CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD). This is the greatest number of cases since measles elimination was documented in the U.S. in 2000.

Furthermore, we firmly believe that by not vaccinating your child, you are taking selfish advantage of thousands of others who do vaccinate their children, which decreases the likelihood that a child will contract one of these diseases. We feel such an attitude to be self-centered and unacceptable. Even delaying or “breaking up the vaccines” to give one or two at a time over additional visits goes against expert recommendations, is not supported by any scientific data, can lead to unnecessary delays and errors, and can put your child, other children, and adults at risk for serious illness (or even death). It is therefore against our medical advice as professionals at Bristow Pediatrics.

Bristow Pediatrics Financial Policy

Summary Notice of Privacy Practices