Practice Holidays and Hours in 2023

 In 2022, we were pleased to add Juneteenth as a company holiday.  It seems our collective history is never harmed as more detail is added to it. 

We celebrate Juneteenth, and now it is a national holiday! 

The following are holidays when our practice phone lines will operate on after-hours policy and we will not be seeing patients in person at the practice:

January 1st (or the national holiday observed date, this year on the 2nd)

Memorial Day

Juneteenth (or the national holiday observed date)

Independence Day (or the national holiday observed date)

Labor Day

Thanksgiving Day

Native American Heritage Day (the day after Thanksgiving)

Christmas Eve (our practice day ends at noon)

Christmas Day (or Christmas Day, observed)

New Year's Eve (our practice day ends at noon)

We do operate business-as-usual on the other holidays in order to serve our students, teachers and other workers who need to take advantage of holidays to have the time to come see us.

Our phone lines are operational 24 x 7 for both urgent and non-urgent calls.  Non-urgent calls will be answered when the practice re-opens. We have same day appointments available for urgent matters, helping you stay out of the emergency departments. We know access to specialists has been very hard these days. We will help when we can.

My own hours have been long, and I am in need of paring back for health reasons.  I will continue to offer TeleVisits only on Monday afternoons and Tuesday evenings.  I will also be out-of-office every 2nd, 4th and 5th Friday. During the summer, there will be a three week time period when only TeleVisits are available.  We have a well-tuned process to care for almost every need through TeleVisits, and it is our sincere hope that another physician will join the practice soon to provide in person care every week of the year.  For me, practicing medicine is more of an ultra-marathon than a sprint, so I have needed breaks in order to keep going; though, as a solo practitioner, I'm never 100% off.

As far as availability for lab draws and vaccines, it is best to call in advance.  Over the past 3 years, we have experienced many of the same staffing challenges as have existed across the healthcare system.  We appreciate the patience our patients have shown to me and to our team.  We have been few but strong though far from perfect.  We are still hoping to bring in another physician and a registered nurse so that we can expand services to our community.  

I am not able to take on new patients.  I rely wholly upon my multi-disciplinary team to serve the many needs of our patients.  Our encouragement to our patients in 2023 is to stay in it: stay with the health goals you have set for yourself, with your self-management, with your commitment to protecting yourself with vaccinations and keeping up with health screenings.  Help us help you by ensuring your specialists are communicating with us.  Use Healow or the Patient Portal to message us when possible, and keep track of this blog for practice updates which I will continue to provide.