Common Questions from Our Patients
What types of patients receive care at Access Healthcare?
Our office provides comprehensive primary care services for infants, children, adolescents, adults and elderly patients. We provide a full range of preventive health services including childhood and adult immunizations, physical examinations and well-woman services. We manage acute illnesses and common medical illnesses like diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, obesity, heart disease, respiratory disease, and psychiatric illnesses.
When is the office open?
Our regular office hours are Monday through Friday from 8:30 AM through 6PM. More detailed information about our office is available for your review.
What about after hours?
One of our physicians is always on call when the office is closed and can be reached by calling our office answering service at (434) 316-7199. We encourage our patients to call us with urgent care questions to avoid unnecessary and expensive trips to the Emergency Department. We make house calls when medically necessary.
What about hospital and nursing home care?
Our physicians maintain staff privileges at the Centra Health hospital system in Lynchburg. While we do not routinely manage our patients in the hospital, we visit them regularly during hospitalization to ensure coordination of care with hospital-based physicians. When needed, we admit and manage our patients at most local skilled care and nursing facilities.
Do I need an appointment?
We prefer that you call in advance for appointments, even for sick visits on the same day. Appointments are usually available the same day for urgent illnesses (if you are sick you need to be seen promptly) and within a few days for routine medical care. Our office information page has more information about scheduling appointments.
What insurance is accepted?
Our office participates in most health insurance plans operating locally, including:
- Aetna
- Anthem
- Cigna
- Medicare (Please note we do not participate in any private Medicare insurance plans)
- Piedmont Community Health Plan
- Southern Health
- United HealthCare
Additional office information is available for your review.
How are prescriptions managed?
We fill almost all prescriptions electronically, either on-line or by fax. Refills are usually completed after our patients contact their pharmacist, who can send us an electronic refill request for prompt processing. If needed, patients can call our office at (434) 316-7199.
How are referrals to other doctors done?
If you need medical care from other physicians, we believe it is our responsibility to facilitate and coordinate this process. An excellent primary care office should arrange for the appointment and send careful referral information, including a summary of your medical records, to the specialist to whom we refer you, then track your care from the specialist office. And that’s what we do.
What about medical records?
Our office began using electronic medical records in 2000. Today all our medical information and billing/insurance information is stored securely on our server. Well-organized electronic medical records allow us to do some wonderful things. When patients call during office hours or when the office is closed, we can immediately access their information to move ahead with what is needed. Hospital records are immediately available through our on-line link with Centra Health. Medications and allergies are listed so we can see them when we need them. We keep a careful list of Immunizations. Our reference lab sends laboratory tests results directly to our system, where they are organized and available. Records from other physicians are scanned them into your electronic chart in our system for instant recall.
How do our patients communicate with us?
If you don’t like automated phone systems with pre-recorded phone trees, you will like Access HealthCare. We still answer the telephone! Assisted by electronic records, our staff and physicians are available to meet your needs efficiently and correctly. It is our practice to inform patients of the results of laboratory and diagnostic tests when we receive them, even if they are normal. It is common for our physicians to ask patients to call back with an update after treatment; we respond to those calls. We are beginning to use a web-based portal into our electronic medical record so patients can communicate with us by secure email and can view elements of their medical information on-line. As technology improves, we want for you to be able to communicate with us and for us to communicate with you in a personal relationship, not a recorded message or a form letter. That’s how a doctor/patient relationship used to be and how it still should be.
What does it mean to be a Medical Home?
Driven by poor reimbursement from insurance companies and escalating administrative burdens, many physician offices have become large, high-volume, impersonal assembly lines where details too often get lost in the shuffle. Reorganization of medical care is long overdue. National legislators have begun to focus on how to create “Medical Homes” in which patients get comprehensive high-quality primary care medical management for better care at less expense. Central to this idea are:
- The use of electronic medical records
- Better coordination of care with a focus on teamwork
- Better doctor/patient communications
- Systems to ensure that necessary elements of medical care are provided.
Access HealthCare continues to improve the management of our practice. We believe we are a Medical Home for our patients. Our style of primary care, a blend of old style communication and modern technology, works for us and for our patients.
