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1900 Randolph Road,
Suite 210 Charlotte, NC 28207

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For Parents

Welcome to our practice! Below you will find the new patient forms required for your first visit to our office. Please print out and complete these forms and bring with you to your consultation.

At each office visit you will be expected to pay your specialist copay as determined by your insurance plan. In addition, you must bring your insurance card with you to each appointment.

Please take a moment to review our Notice of Privacy Practice. A printed copy of this document is available upon request.  If you have  questions regarding these forms or your upcoming appointment, please contact us at 704-370-0223.

If your child is a new patient please print the following new patient forms and bring with you to the appointment. Printable directions to our office are also available below. If you need to request your child’s medical records, a medical release form signed by you, the guarantor, is required in order to comply with HIPAA regulations. Please print the following medical records release and complete all sections. Call our office for more information on medical records.

Surgical Care

Once your child is scheduled for surgery, a member of our nursing staff will call you to personally discuss all the pre-surgery instructions necessary to prepare for your child’s upcoming surgery.

At the hospital, you will be given written instructions for taking care of your child after you get home from the hospital. Please do not hesitate to call our office if you have any questions regarding post-operative care.

Resources

The internet is full of useful (and unfortunately sometimes confusing or misleading) information  about surgical conditions in children. Please contact our office and speak with one of the surgeons  or nurses if you have any questions before or after your consultation. Should you choose to further your own research about your child’s condition, The American Pediatric Surgical Association has   very reliable, useful information on their website at www.pediatricsurgerymd.org.

How do I choose a physician?

Finding the right doctor for your family is one of the most important decisions parents make.  The task can be daunting. To help in your search, we’re giving you our insider’s perspective.  We use the same approach for choosing a physician when our own children are ill. Evaluating who is a “good doctor” can be extremely difficult, even for us. A good bedside manner is not enough. You also want to know how well that doctor can assess the problem, determine the appropriate treatment, and then execute that treatment in a skillful manner. The last points can be very difficult to determine, and it is often only the physician’s closest colleagues in his own field that know the true extent of his abilities. Despite these difficulties, there are some basic questions families can ask that can help provide clues to a physician’s abilities and how well their children will be cared for:

Has the physician received the appropriate training in her field?

i.e. Board certified and keeping up with re-certification requirements.  These data are frequently available at the websites of the national licensing bodies.

Is the physician up-to-date in the current practices and continuing to perform the procedures listed under the certification requirements of the national bodies?

This point is especially important when evaluating surgeons and other procedure-based specialists.  It is very reasonable to do your own research on procedures, then have an educated discussion with your prospective physician regarding the best options for your family.  Despite the large amount of information on the internet, a doctor can help you sift through the details and provide expert opinion on what often is confusing, and sometimes conflicting information.  When asking about the number of procedures a physician has performed, remember, the absolute number is less important than if the physician has had a broad experience in that general area.  Some conditions are so rare that no one will have a vast experience with them, however, often the broader experience of the physician will help him to expertly take care of the problem.

Who covers for this physician when she is unavailable: are they in the same field, do they have the same level of expertise?

When you select a physician for your child, you are not just selecting her, but her partners as well.  There will be times when you will need your child’s physician and she may be unavailable, or in the case of surgery, children may have longer hospital stays in which there may be multiple covering physicians, especially for nights, weekends or holidays.  It is important to know if these covering physicians have the same level of training and expertise, and what level of communication they have with the doctor who initially took care of you.  In some situations, physicians have to rely on coverage from doctors out of their field, or doctors for hire (locum tenems) who are only in town for a few days to help.  In pediatrics, unfortunately, it is sometimes adult physicians covering.  Selecting a physician in any field now is similar to what has long been the practice in obstetrics; where an expectant mother may have an obstetrician she sees on a regular basis, but it is the on-call physician from the group who will actually deliver her baby; choosing the right group in addition to the right physician then becomes extremely important.

How was the referral made?

Many large health systems employ their own doctors, and health insurance companies sometimes have contracts with only certain physicians in the community. In both cases, the health systems and insurers want referrals only to go to their physicians, and families may not be made aware that there are other doctors in the community who not only provide that service, but may have even more experience with the disease or procedure in question. It is every patient’s legal right to know all of the available physicians to whom they may be referred, but they must ask about those physicians when the referral is made. This applies not just to when your child has been seen in his primary doctor’s office, but also when your child is being evaluated in the emergency department or has been admitted to the hospital. Even if a physician is not part of a particular insurance network, alternative payment strategies can be worked out that do not involve expenses being paid completely out of pocket.

Why Choose PSA?

At Pediatric Surgical Associates, we are all up to date, board certified pediatric surgeons with almost 100 years of combined experience in every general, thoracic, and laparoscopic pediatric surgical problem. We operate at both children’s hospitals in Charlotte, NC: Levine Children’s Hospital (Carolinas Health System) and Hemby Children’s Hospital (Novant Health), and can help you choose which would be best for your family. We function as a true group, in which we share clinical responsibilities and maintain close communication amongst the partners, ensuring excellent continuity of care for our patients, even if the primary surgeon is not directly available. Yet, we also strive to maintain that one-on-one relationship with families that is so important to develop the trust that helps our patients and their families get through the stress of surgery. The surgeon you meet pre-operatively, is the surgeon who performs the operation. Yet that individual surgeon has the support of his other partners as well, tapping into their expertise and energy to ensure optimal outcomes for our patients.

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