Welcome!
Our practice provides comprehensive pediatric and adolescent care for children from birth through the college years. Our aim is to foster a personalized relationship with children, adolescents, and their parents, and provide exceptional care throughout a child’s and young adult’s life. We are a member of the Pediatric Physicians’ Organization at Boston Children’s Hospital. When specialized care is required, we will refer your child to a specialist who we trust, at Children’s Hospital or another local institution.
IMPORTANT NOTICE ABOUT OUR PRACTICE
At the end of August, our practice will be converting to a new Electronic Medical Record system. This will be a difficult and time-consuming process!
Although we will do EVERYTHING we can to ensure that patient care is maintained to our highest standards, inevitably there will be delays with technical issues such as messages, medication refills, forms and the like. Most of the burden will fall to our outstanding support staff. Be confident that we will do everything we can to take care of our patients and their families.
PLEASE BE PATIENT WITH US, AS WE MAKE THIS DIFFICULT TRANSITION. Our intention is to continue to give our patients the best pediatric care possible.
Feel free to give us feedback during this transition period.
Jonathan A. Benjamin, M.D.
Roger W. Spingarn, M.D.
Elissa B. Rottenberg, M.D.
Regarding insurance and deductibles
Shifting The Cost Of Care
Insurers continually adjust the services they cover and how they pay for pediatric care. The idea is to shift the burden of the cost of care to patients, away from the insurer. We have serious ethical concerns about this trend. Please read more here.
Ready or Not, Here It Comes!
PLEASE IMMUNIZE YOUR CHILDREN AGAINST INFLUENZA.
We have annual flu-vaccine clinics after-hours each fall, by appointment. Please be ready, call to schedule.
A Word About Urgent Care Centers
We discourage our patients from using Urgent Care Centers or Walk-in clinics without calling us first. While it is true that these centers can be helpful at times, our experience has frequently been that diagnoses are missed, ailments are mistreated with inappropriate medications or dosing, and referrals to emergency rooms and specialists are increased. These centers are typically staffed by physicians or nurse practitioners who are not broadly trained in pediatrics. One of us, or our coverage group, is available 24/7 to help guide you when you, or your child or teenager, has an urgent pediatric medical issue.
A Nasal Spray Vaccine Notice
For the 2016-17 season, we will not be offering or recommending the nasal spray version of the influenza vaccine. Recent data has shown that during the past few influenza seasons the nasal spray vaccine did not perform as well as anticipated. We continue to strongly recommend vaccination against influenza for our patients aged 6 months and older, and will administer the injectable form of the vaccine. As we do each year, flu vaccine will be available during evening clinics, by appointment, in the fall. Dates for those clinics will be posted here. If it is more convenient to have your child(ren) vaccinated during office hours, an appointment with our nursing staff is also an option.
Important Recall information
AUVI-Q (epinephrine auto-injection) has been RECALLED; all strengths.
If you have one of these devices, please notify us. We will send a prescription for another epinephrine-containing auto-injector to whatever pharmacy you specify.
For detailed information about this recall, we refer you to https://www.auvi-q.com.
Insurance Coverage for Brand vs Generic Drugs is changing – please read our note.
