Finding a pediatrician

Sort of dumb question from a FTM here...

I'm 30 weeks today and figure I ought to start looking for a pediatrician for these kiddos. I have the list of providers from our insurance and I will probably ask some new moms their recommendations, too...but then what? Did you actually go interview several pedis before you chose one? Or did you just call and say, "Hey, I'm having twins, I want you to be their doc, I'll call you when they get here!"

Whenever I've had to go to a new doctor, I just called and made an appointment. So I'm just a little confused on how this process works. Any info would be greatly appreciated!

 

You can do either!

When I worked at a pediatrician's office (well, a huge practice) we had "expecting appointments" where a potential patient's parent(s) would come in and ask questions and meet the doctor. A lot of people do it by word of mouth though. If you want to do some research online first, go to yelp.com or google reviews.

Our first pediatrician was the doctor's office I went to as a kid and where I worked at for my first job. When we moved, I just looked in the insurance book and selected a pediatrician from there. I've been pretty happy with them.

Also, if there are more than one location in a practice, you should probably see which doctors work in which facility and on which days.

 

My twins stayed in the hospital for 9 days and, although they were primarily seen there by the neonatologist at the hospital, the pediatrician I had selected did come in and see them. Honestly, I did not do any interviews or anything. I selected someone affiliated with that hospital in an office not too far from where I live. I looked at the bios for the pediatricians that were online and selected basically based on that. I figured we could always switch if we didn't like her. They're healthy so the only thing switching would involve is moving paperwork/records from one doctor to another.

 

With my twins, I asked my own regular family doctor if he would take them on and he did. For this baby, unfortunately I have no choice for medical care because we are military.

I would ask around and see who other moms recommend and start there.

 

It's not a stupid question at all. I think most people are just given a laundry list of providers/practices and it's like choosing a name out of a hat. Here's what we did which worked well for us.

Our boys were in the NICU for an extended period of time. We got to know and trust their primary neonatologist very well. We started with the list given to us and then sat down for 10 minutes one day with the neonatologist to pick his brain about some of the options, his opinions, etc. We also made sure to ask where he took his own children knowing he (as a trained pediatrician) would surely choose a quality provider.

Once we did this (as well as talked to several nurses, neighbors, etc. whose opinions/judgment we respected), we narrowed the list to three and set up interviews. We formulated our list of questions ahead of time and took it to each meeting. Shortly, thereafter we made our final decision.

That would be how I'd recommend going about it. Hopefully, your babies won't need NICU time and you won't have a neonatologist at all. So, just talk with a few professionals or personal friends/family whose judgment you respect, then set up meetings and take the questions that are most important to you.
Some questions we had were:
-- Will we always see you or will we rotate among doctors in the practice (decide if it's important to you to be with a large practice or a single provider)?
-- How is after-hours handled? Answering service? Your own staff? What is your policy about getting back to us (ex. within an hour?)?
-- Who covers for you when you're out of town?
-- At what hospitals do you have privileges?
-- Do you have separate waiting rooms for well and sick visits?
-- Do you care for other early preemies? How do you handle them differently, if at all?
-- And, so forth.

Tour the office. Meet the staff. If you do all of this, I bet you'll get a very good feel for what provider/practice is right for your family.

Now, some people thought we went a little overboard, but that didn't bother me a bit (most people thought we were thorough . We did our research upfront and we're now with a single provider who often calls us back personally--even in the evening, sees us in the evening if necessary, has made a house call in the dead of winter when our boys were infants, and knows our boys by name.

Good luck.

 

I spoke with friends as well as my perinatologist to see who them recommended. I am very happy with my decision and I never met the doctor before, just called them to ask a few questions.

 

we actually spoke with the nurses in the hospital to see who the recommended. One small problem was the doctor they recommended was no longer accpeting new patients so we decided to try one of the ped's that came in to the hosptial, of course we weren't having twins then. Once we had thought we picked a doctor we went and saw her at her office and ended up not liking her so we swtiched to another doctor in the same building that we love and have since spoken with in regards to the twins and she is extremely excited to start being their pediatrition. She even came and saw us a couple weeks ago when i was admitted for (but didn't have any babies) PTL she went over everything we needed to know for preemie babies. And just because you decide to go with one doctor doesn't mean you have to stick with that doctor. Good luck!!!

 

For my twin we obviously just went with who we had been seeing for their big sister. But when my oldest DD was born I asked around to friends. I did not interview any pediatricians myself. ardon: I felt like my friends who were going to the ped were happy and they gave a good recommendation so we went with that. :good: I called their office to be sure they were accepting new patients with our insurance and asked them what I needed to do. All I had to do was tell the hospital they were the ped after my daughter was born.

 

Thank you all so much for your help!

 

I didn't interview either. Most pedi's around here when you call them are booked solid and say they aren't taking new patients, so the only way to get a good one is to just go ahead and put them down on the hospital list as the pediatrician I wanted and then they will take the babies as their patient. It's totally absurd how it works here, but that's the only way I was able to get the pedi I wanted for all of my kids (my son's pedi retired). I just did word of mouth, my best friend's pedi cared for her twins super well, and most of my friends took their kids to him, so that's how I choose ours.