Policies and Forms

Hours

Office hours are from 8:30am to 4:00pm, Monday-through Thursday and 8:30am to 12:00noon on Friday. If you are unable to keep your appointment please inform us of this at least 24hours and preferably 48hours in advance so that other patients can be scheduled. One or two slots are reserved each day for urgent problems. If you have an urgent rheumatology related problem, call around 9:00am to see if you can be worked in that day. We will try to work patients in to be seen if we possibly can. "Walk-ins" cannot be seen.

Phone Calls

If you are having a rheumatology related problem or you have a question for Dr. Howard, please call the office during regular hours. Dr. Howard's first priority is the patient in the office. Therefore, he will not be interrupted for routine phone questions. We do try to answer all the morning questions by 12:30 and the afternoon questions by 4:00pm. If you are not at home to receive the reply/answer, we will reply to an answering machine if appropriate. Otherwise please call back to get the reply.

All Prescription refills should be handled at the time of the office visit. Occasionally "phone in" prescriptions may be necessary and are done only during normal business hours. Please allow 24hours for telephone prescription refills to be processed. This takes an inordinate amount of staff time. Please come to each office visit with information on each medication you are taking and how many refills are remaining.

Due to space limitations in the patient area and exam rooms we request that no more than one family member accompany the patient to the exam room. Thank you for your cooperation on this.

Lab and X-Ray Reports

Dr. Howard receives a large number of laboratory and x-ray reports daily. He reviews these personally. Reports in rheumatology are difficult to interpret and are often not simply a "positive" or "negative" result. For this reason it is best that in most cases the discussion of the results wait for the follow-up visit. Therefore unless other arrangements are made in advance, no calls will be made with lab or x-ray results unless there are critical or serious issues in the results that need immediate attention.

You are welcome to call for your lab results but any discussion of the results will be done only at an office visit. Call backs on lab results my take 24 hours or more.