On-call pediatricians...

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stonewall22

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Something I wonder about...

I take my daughters to a pediatrician in a practice of 3, and they share call with a fourth. When these pediatricians are on call it is not necessary to call a central board and page them, we can simply directly call a cell phone carried by the on-call pediatrician. As a parent, I LOVE this...certainly an inconvenience for the physicians. I have never experienced anything like this with any of my doctors, now or when I was younger. I'm just curious how often pediatric practices have a setup like this where you can directly call the pediatrician without going through a paging service? Is this unique?

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I would say that it is uncommon to have a straight shot to the doctor. Whether or not you can do this would depend greatly on your patient population. Four pediatricians would have about 10,000 patients. I would never do this for several reasons. First and foremost, you don't get paid for it! It's one thing to take care of emergencies, but I would want the calls screened. I don't want to get called at 3 am to be asked how to dose tylenol. Now if I were running a cash only botique practice with an annual retainer, I would answer calls 24/7.

Ed
 
I would say that it is uncommon to have a straight shot to the doctor. Whether or not you can do this would depend greatly on your patient population. Four pediatricians would have about 10,000 patients. I would never do this for several reasons. First and foremost, you don't get paid for it! It's one thing to take care of emergencies, but I would want the calls screened. I don't want to get called at 3 am to be asked how to dose tylenol. Now if I were running a cash only botique practice with an annual retainer, I would answer calls 24/7.

Ed

Ed: Whereas I understand the sentiment, I do wonder about the practical and cost issues of going with a screening service/nurse vs no screening nurse. After all, the only benefit I could see to having someone take the calls and then forward it on to you to call back is the ability to screen and triage the simple calls. Is there really a financial (and overall benefit) to having the screening intermediary? I think I've read that there can be, but I wonder if a "new" practice, trying to take on market share, wouldn't be willing to forgo the intermediate to be able to offer direct on-call access? In other words, is the true extra amount of calls you'll get that much more than the cost savings and benefit to practice-building of having direct access?

No dog in this fight, just curious.....
 
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