I feel I have to clear the air a bit -
1. Since I "advertised" here in early November, and especially since the Today Show, I have been BUSY. but not overwhelmed.
I count 150 new contacts in the past month. Almost all have or may have PANDAS. To put this in perspective, this is about as many as I would normally encounter in about 5 years time.
2. Those that have been nice enough to visit me know that, at the moment, I work alone. I am the secretary, I make the charts, do the billing, and yes I clean the bathrooms. This doesn't bother me at all, but does take away from the time required to be a doctor.
3. It is true that my voice mail is frequently full (do you wonder why?). However, I spent the afternoon yesterday clearing out 75% of my messages and personally responding to most. I promise to get to everybody.
4. I do try to make everything as easy as possible for the patient and parents - I see one patient at a time, so you will not have to have your child exposed to more strep in a waiting room, have a little playroom in which to examine younger children naturally. I try to minimize paperwork and spend at least an hour and a half with parents. I try to explain all the options. I've even picked up patients at the local train station and then back after the consult. I have a scheduled opened to see patients M-F 8am-9pm have Sat PM and Sunday hours. How much more accommodating can you be? ...
5. I have been accepting insurance. As you might expect, I am very behind on billing. There are people I have seen for less than you would pay for a pizza dinner with your child and I have tried to provide the same care to everyone. I'm going to try to keep this going as long as I can, but may have to modify things to stay afloat. I will be updating my website soon to clarify matters.
6. I now do phone consults. My philosophy is a phone consult should be just like a face-to-face with the only exception is that I can't examine your child. Once we do a consult, I am your doctor with respect to PANDAS management. I have to charge up-front for this, because there is almost always no insurance coverage for this.
