Flu Season is Here
Although we haven’t seen any influenza yet in our area, don’t wait any longer to get your flu shots! Remember, all children between the ages of 6 months and 21 years old should get a flu vaccine. Those patients 2 years of age and older who do not have asthma or an immunocompromising condition can get the intranasal flu spray (Flumist) instead of an injection. “The flu” is not just a bad cold, but 7-10 days of high fevers, cough, headache, sore throat, and bodyaches. Most kids will only need one flu vaccine this season instead of two, so please call and make an appointment for your child to get vaccinated today.
New expanded hours!
Each office is now open from 8-9am for our “Quick STOP” hour on Mondays only. Receptionists will be available starting at 7:30am to take appointments for acute visits only: Sore throat, Temperatures/fever, Otitis Media (earache), and Pink eye. More complex medical illnesses such as asthma attacks, headaches, abdominal pain, and medication evaluations require more time and will be scheduled at later times during the day. Tuesdays through Saturdays work as before: our receptionists are available at 8:30am to make appointments to be seen that day or on subsequent days.
Secondly, each office now stays open one hour later one day each week: Tuesdays in Libertyville, Wednesdays in Lake Forest, and Thursdays in Barrington. The last scheduled appointment is 5:45pm. These appointments can be made for sick visits as well as for health maintenance/well child exams.
Lastly, our phones remain on/open during the 12noon-1pm lunch hour to enable you to make appointments for your children to be seen. We hope these changes allow us to better serve you and your children.
Lake Shore Pediatrics strongly supports the following policy statement regarding retail-based health clinics.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) opposes retail-based clinics (RBCs) as an appropriate source of medical care for infants, children, and adolescents and strongly discourages their use, because the AAP is committed to the medical home model. The medical home model provides accessible, family-centered, comprehensive, continuous, coordinated, compassionate, and culturally effective care for which the pediatrician and the family share responsibility. Given that the RBC is not a medical home model, the AAP is particularly concerned with the effects of the following attributes of an RBC on health care for children and adolescents:
- Fragmentation of care.
- The possible effects on quality of care.
- Provision of episodic care to children with special health care needs and chronic diseases, who may not be readily identifiable.
- Lack of access to and maintenance of a complete, accessible, central health record that contains all pertinent patient information.
- The use of tests for the purposes of diagnosis without proper follow-up.
- Possible public health issues that could occur when patients with contagious diseases are in a commercial, retail environment with little or no isolation (eg, fevers, rashes, mumps, measles, strep throat, etc).
Seeing children with “minor” conditions, as will often be the case in an RBC, is misleading and problematic. Many pediatricians use the opportunity of seeing the child for something minor to address issues in the family, discuss any problems with obesity or mental health issues, catch up on immunizations, identify undetected illness, and continue strengthening the relationship with the child and family. These visits are important and provide an opportunity to work with patients and families to deal with a variety of other issues.
[taken from AAP Retail-Based Clinic Policy Work Group, 2006]
