Paragould Pediatrics, PLLC | 4000 Linwood Dr, Paragould, AR 72450, USA | Phone 870-236-7337 | Fax 870-236-7332

Our Telephone Policy

Telephone Policy

Our office is committed to helping you through problems over the phone.  During office hours, we can help determine if your child needs to be seen in our office or just needs some TLC at home.

• For a true emergency, call 911 first!
  

• For poisonings, call Arkansas Poison​ Center at (800)-222-1222

• For other concerns regarding sick or injured children, call us first. If it is an emergency, you can press “1” at the telephone menu.
  

• If you leave a message on any voicemail, please listen closely to all instructions. Messages can be sent to the wrong voicemail by not following the recorded details.
  

• We cannot be responsible for returning phone calls in a timely manner when the phone number provided is disconnected, does not have a voicemail or answering machine set up, or is busy for more than​ ten minutes.
  

• Our phones are generally the busiest first thing in the morning and late in the afternoon. Calling in between “off-peak” hours will most likely result in quicker service to any question you have.

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• If we’re busy, you may leave a voicemail message for us. We do prioritize our callback order, returning calls about sick children first. Less urgent phone calls, (refill requests, referral requests, or non-urgent health questions) will be returned by the end of the day. If your sick child call isn’t returned within 1 hour, please call us back. 
  

• For non-urgent requests or questions, please contact us by calling our office during normal business hours or through the patient portal.
  

Your telephone calls

Sick child calls: 
 Call our office at 8:00 to be given a time for sick call. These appointments go quickly during our busy times so calling right at 8am will ensure you receive a same day appointment. Unless your child’s condition is urgent, our receptionist will send you to the nurse’s voicemail for any quest. Your call will be handled by one of our nurses, depending on who is available. Please leave a detailed message letting our nurses know exactly what is going on. After listening to your concerns and reviewing with our providers, the nurse will either suggest making an appointment or recommend an at-home course of treatment. Our nurses are specially trained to make decisions about which children need to be seen in the office and how to give care at home.  Our providers review all advice given and are available if the nurses can’t help you. 

Prescription refill calls: 
When calling for a prescription refill, please select the refill line on our automated system. You will be forwarded to he voicemail where you will leave the name of the patient, date of birth, the name of the medication and dosage, and your preferred pharmacy. Please allow 24 hours for prescription refills – plan ahead so you don’t run out of important medicines.  We cannot refill  prescriptions we did not prescribe or medications for patients we have never seen or have not seen in the past year.  We don’t prescribe new
medications over the phone.

Paperwork request calls:

When calling for paperwork (shot records, physical forms, etc.), please have ready the address or fax number to which you would like the records sent.  If you prefer to pick those up, please do so during normal business hours. Please allow five working days for paperwork requests to be completed. In some cases, your paperwork cannot be sent unless you sign and file a written consent with us (we’ll let you know if this is the case). 

Referral requests:
We are pleased to provide comprehensive health care for children.  However, occasionally we will recommend a referral to a specialist. In this case, we will obtain the necessary authorization for your insurance company and set up the referral for you.  This can sometimes take a week to complete.  We cannot authorize referrals for patients we have never seen or for problems that we have never discussed or treated in our office. (We like to send a letter of introduction to a specialist describing the child’s problem, but we can’t provide this service unless we have discussed it together recently.) Also, because of insurance rules, we cannot give retroactive referrals for consultations which one of our providers did not initially recommend.

Night time and weekend calls:

We want to keep our line open at night for urgent calls. Please limit night time and weekend calls to emergencies, urgent problems that can’t wait, or if you are truly worried about something.

Tips on calling us after hours: 

Call 870-236-7337 & follow instructions to leave a message concerning your child.  Please be patient waiting for a call back.  Sometimes we get several calls at once. Even if your regular doctor is not the one on call, the on-call provider can still help you. So both of our providers can have some evenings off, vacations, etc., we rotate night telephone call between Mrs. Sara Brown CPNP-PC and Dr. Kristi Wenger.