As many of you may have noticed, some of our providers here at PMOW are expecting babies themselves. Soon, in fact. Which is wonderful news and we are all very excited for them! However, it is going to mean we are missing two providers for a while this winter, and that is going to present some challenges.
First and foremost, we wanted to reassure everyone that we are still going to be here in full operation every day, maintaining our usual hours and adding provider shifts wherever we can, but we are going to be down one provider most days for a few months. You may find we are pushing off some non-urgent visits when possible, and there will be fewer appointment choices to work with in the meantime. Please try to bear with us. Happily, it is only a temporary problem. And a very happy one, at that!
The other thing that will happen is that, with fewer providers working longer hours at the office, we will be adding a nurse triage service to our phone coverage for urgent calls over night. This is a highly trained team of pediatric specialists that has been providing similar service to other providers in our region for many years. We recognize this will be a big change for our practice but they come highly recommended by other pediatricians we know and we think they will be a big help getting us through this challenging period, while providing the highest quality care for our patients.
Although precise timing with babies can be difficult to predict, we do expect everyone to be back to their usual schedules by February at the latest. And until then, we have a great team who are going to be working hard to provide all our families with the very best pediatric care! Thank you for understanding and please reach out with any questions.