How did you choose your pediatrician?

[nordey]

This may seem like a question for the "expecting" threads but my kids are actually 9 and 10 years old and our beloved pediatrician of 10+ years (since my son was only 3 hours old!) has recently retired. We have other physicians in her practice covering for any illnesses that may come up between now and the end of the year, but I was planning to choose a new pediatrician during open enrollment this fall.

When I met with our ped this spring she gave me several names of pediatricians in town. I just called an office where three of them work and waited over 20 minutes just to get my call answered. When I asked if I could schedule time to meet with the pediatricians I was told "they don't do that." That she (the person on the phone whose English language skills were barely understandable) could take down the questions I had for the doctors and she would ask them and get back to me with their responses. Um... no.

I guess I'm not really sure what to do from here. I'm not all that keen to sign up with an office where it takes 20 minutes to get my call answered. Heck, I was irritated and I wasn't even calling about a sick child. I'd be frantic if my child were ill.

I would just stay with my old pediatrician's office but there is such high turn-over in physicians there. Maybe it's time to just get over feeling like we need to have a bond with our physician and at least go where we are familiar with the office, etc.

Any insight or advice from personal experience is appreciated. THANKS!

[Jenyfer9]

We changed peds within the last year for my two boys, so I'll tell you my experience... because sofar it has gone VERY well.

When I was preggo with ds#1, I thought that I would go with the ped group that I went to when I was a kid ...we live in the same area, many of the same doctors are there and so I felt comfortable with it. Well, turns out that there were just WAY to many patients in this practice for the doctors to be able to handle with any sort of timeliness (sp?). We would wait FOREVER to get in for our appointment, it was hard to get an appointment, etc. You name it, it was bad. Except for the short time with the doc, that was just fine. I liked the doc.

ANYHOO, I looked at what I really liked and disliked about that practice, and it came down to that I wanted a smaller practice. So when I was calling docs in our area and in our insurance plan, that was what I looked for. How many docs in the practice, size of staff, how long was the typical time that you had to call ahead to schedule an appointment, things like that that really started getting to me about the other bigger practice. So when I called our current doc, I knew ahead of time that there were only two docs in the practice, but I really liked the impression that I got over the phone. I think that is key... and if they can't take time for you as a prospective patient, then how will they have time for you as a patient?