As you are aware, there is a global pandemic disease with early symptoms that are similar to the common cold and flu. Fortunately, children rarely experience more than mild illness. The health department and the CDC are encouraging all individuals with cough and fever to stay home. We all need to follow these guidelines to keep families safe. If your child has a mild respiratory illness, our nurses can help you provide home care over the phone or we can schedule a telemedicine visit.
ALL Pediatrics is committed to providing a safe environment for our families, our employees and our physicians. With this in mind, we have made changes to our schedules for the next four weeks. Please read the information below carefully.
· All patients will be screened for potential exposure to the coronavirus when scheduling any type of appointment. We will perform the screening again when you arrive in the office. If your child has a respiratory illness and is scheduled for a well check; please call our Triage Nurse before coming for well check visit.
· We are cancelling all WALK-IN visits to allow for better screening and appropriate placement in the schedule. ALL APPOINTMENTS MUST BE SCHEDULED BY PHONE. If you walk into the office without an appointment, you will be advised to return to your car to call our office.
· We have disabled the ability for patients to self-schedule for sick visits via the portal or the sick widget in order to screen patients; you may still self-schedule for well visits.
· We will have block scheduling to separate well visits and sick visits by two hours. The Lakeridge and Alexandria offices will see well children ONLY in the morning and sick children ONLY in the afternoon. The Lorton office will see sick children ONLY in the morning and well children ONLY in the afternoon.
· We will continue to see children for well visits in a safe environment free of our sick children.
It is very important to maintain regular well check appointments to ensure that all vaccines and screening tests are completed.
· We will have evening sick appointments at Alexandria on Tuesday and Thursday nights ONLY.
· To minimize the number of people entering our offices and waiting areas; it is extremely important that you bring only the child with an appointment and one parent. All other family members should remain at home.
· As your family’s medical home, we want to partner with you to provide the best care for your child. Please call us before taking your children to urgent care clinics. At ALL Pediatrics, we are working to minimize any exposure to illness when you enter our office. As coronavirus spreads throughout our community, urgent care clinics will not be able to separate patients. Help us help you.
· If you feel that your child needs emergency care after our office closes, please call our afterhours line so that we may help you decide if this is necessary. Adult patients are significantly more contagious than children. Additionally, we expect that the hospital systems will be overwhelmed within the next few days and hospitals need to concentrate on caring for the severely ill patients in our community.