Office Policies

Appointments and Walk-in Visits

Appointments are scheduled by calling the office number or by making appointments after your visit. We prefer that future appointments are made before you leave the office so that we can ensure that we can see you at the requested time by the physician. For all new patients we request that you arrive at the office at least fifteen minutes prior to your first appointment so that new patient registration forms may be completed.

You should receive a telephone call from a staff member 24 to 72 hours prior to your appointment, thus we ask that we receive a confirmation of your plan to keep your appointment. If the scheduled appointment cannot be kept, please let us know at least 24 hours in advance so that another patient waiting for an appointment can be seen sooner. Repeated missed appointments may result in charges. If there is a problem between appointments, please call and we will decide together if the problem can be handled by telephone or if we need to see you in the office.

Telephone Calls

The telephone is answered 24 hours a day either directly or with the aid of voice mail. Calls for prescription refills and other non-emergency problems should be made during regular office hours to 214-369-1901 (Dallas), or 972-596-4383 (Plano). Your medical record, which is only available in the office, is needed to determine whether a refill should be issued. Therefore, you must keep track of medication needs and call for refills during office hours.

We understand how frustrating it can be to call a physicians office and not get to talk to the appropriate personnel, but we have trained our staff and instructed them on how to handle all in-coming telephone calls. Please be patient, this is a courtesy that you would want observed if you were the patient in the office at the time, and your call will be handled as soon as possible, if not immediately. If you have an urgent medical problem outside of normal business hours, please page us at 214-246-0253. We are very careful about returning phone calls. If you don’t hear from us, there has been an error and thus please call back.

Office Hours

We have calendars available for pick-up in the office and on our website: www.texasallergyonline.com. If you are placed on injections, our office caters to your schedule as much as possible, and even administers injections during the lunch hour for your convenience.

Prescriptions and Refills

All medications, including refills are prescribed based on your current condition and will be summarized in an instruction sheet. Follow up appointments are scheduled so that we can monitor your condition and adjust the medications or allergy injections accordingly. If the last appointment was not kept, refills for a limited period will be given to allow time for a new appointment. Calls for prescription refills should be made during regular office hours. Refill requests will be handled more efficiently if your pharmacist calls or faxes our office. Please provide us with your pharmacy’s phone number.

Past Due Accounts

If your account becomes past due and you are having financial difficulty, please contact the office regarding your account so that satisfactory arrangements can be made. We understand the complexities of medical care reimbursements but timely payment ensures that our center can operate efficiently. Please refer to our insurance information for more information regarding past due accounts.

Laboratory or Imaging Test Results

Laboratory and imaging test results may return at different times and may take as long as one to two weeks. All results are tracked and checked as they come in by the physician. All results will be discussed with you once we receive the results.

Information for patients placed on allergy shots

If allergy injections are recommended, our office administers them at various hours throughout the day. We have made every effort to accommodate varying times and schedules. Please refer to an office calendar for more specific times & dates.

These injections may be taken 1-3 times a week (leaving one day in between) or as directed by the doctor. You are required to wait 20 to 30 minutes after each injection, because of the possibility of a systemic reaction. These reactions can occur within minutes or up to one hour after an injection. We ask that you do not exercise 1 hour before or 4 hours after your injection(s). If you notice symptoms such as hives, nettle rash, difficulty in breathing, and/or faint feeling, take an antihistamine and please return to the office immediately or go to your nearest emergency room or call 911.

After four (4) hours you will need to check the sight of injections for local reactions (1 inch in diameter or larger) for redness and/or swelling. If you have this type of reaction you will need to let the injection nurse know the next time you come in for your injection.

For those patients who are on allergy injections, once you reach the undiluted vials, we can provide an anesthetic to help reduce the burning sensation along with ice packs.

Website

Please see our office hours for up to date calendar.

Mail Server

We have an established e-mail account to handle non-emergent messages. Please do not leave urgent messages or medical information on the e-mail account because messages are not encrypted and will be answered in 1 to 2 business days. Our e-mail account is: general@texasallergyonline.com