Dr. Jaime on 2020
2020 was a year of change for everyone around the world. For us, at Storybook Pediatrics, it brought both planned and unplanned changes. In January, our founding physician, Dr. Ron Smith retired from general pediatrics. Fortunately, he established this practice on sound Biblical principles leaving us prepared to continue his legacy going forward.
Then, as we are all well aware, March brought the COVID-19 pandemic to our midst. Within 48 hours, we totally redesigned our business plan, our office flow, and our scheduling procedures in order to protect patients, parents, and staff. This has been an ever-changing exercise in flexibility and patience in order to meet the dynamic and often contradictory public health mandates.
Insurance companies have also executed changes in contractual agreements, requiring increasing amounts of paper work and documentation in order for them to exact coverage for visits. Moving into 2021, they have even removed our capability to schedule nurse-only visits.
It has certainly been a “unprecedented time” ( to coin a vogue term for the year) in more ways than one for us here at Storybook.
However, throughout it all we continue to strive to serve our patients and their families to the best of our abilities with the resources that we have.
Below, is our hope and prayer for what you feel about Storybook, our staff and our providers as we move into 2021.
Thank you for partnering with us to grow your children into strong, healthy, independent adults ready to take on the world:
Storybook is my child’s medical home. It is a place filled with loving people from the second I walk in the door to the second I walk out and thereafter.
It is a place where I partner with my provider to come up with the best preventive care and treatment plans for my child. It is a place where I am heard, where my provider truly wants to work with me and understand my goals for my child’s health. At the same time, it is a place where the providers and staff aren’t afraid to have hard conversations. It is a place where they explain, based on their understanding of the most up to date medical literature, why they feel an intervention is best for my child, even if I don’t necessarily want to hear it. They then take the time and effort to work through my reservations with me and together we find middle ground.
It is a place where they empower me to take care of my child’s health. They explain the approach they are taking and why they are taking it. They discuss the broad complexities of pediatric care in a way I understand and can apply to future situations in my child’s life. In this manner, I will know what to do the next time my child is ill or uncomfortable. I will know what to do because my provider has taken the time to educate me about when to be concerned and how to take care of mild illnesses at home.
It is a place where they put my child’s health in front of convenience. Even simple illnesses or problems can have long term implications if they are not treated properly and education is not extensively given in order to empower me in knowing how to control long term or
chronic symptoms at home. Thus, Storybook is a place where my provider wants to see me and my child, talk to me and answer my questions, not just write me a prescription.
Storybook is a place where providers are continually educating themselves. They keep up with the most up to date literature to the best of their ability. Because it is my child’s medical home, my providers do their best to keep me “at home,” meaning they do research and work through illnesses in a step-wise fashion with me to come to an accurate diagnosis and treatment plan. I understand that this may sometimes mean that I may need to come in for followup visits with my child and that sometimes my provider may have to do research after I leave the office and follow up with me later. But I also understand that they do
their very best to keep me from making time- consuming and expensive trips to a specialist, unless they are out of options or have reached a point that a procedure needs to be done or I request that second opinion.
My providers communicate with each other, both verbally and in my child’s chart. In this way, everyone in the office can follow through on a set plan and I can be assured that they have put their proverbial heads together to treat my child.
In short, Storybook is a place where I know my child is receiving medical care that goes “above and beyond,” that my providers aren’t content to be mediocre practitioners, but strive to be the best in their field. And above all else, it is a place where I, and my child, are seen as the individuals we are. We are loved and cared for and known. It is a place I would refer my family and friends and a place that I am happy to call my child’s medical home.