WELCOME
What Is Family Practice?
Family Practice is a board-certified specialty. It requires three years special training after a physician receives a medical degree. This training focuses not only on the family as a whole but on the whole wellness of the patient. This includes coordination of care for adults, adolescents and pediatrics. This is a link to our Services.
Hospital Affiliations & Hospitalists
Our providers are affiliated with Advent Health and Highlands Regional Medical Center. To better serve you, they refer to the Hospitalists of the respective hospital for admissions. A Hospitalist is a hospital based physician specializing in treating adult hospital admissions. To assure continuity of care, your provider has access to your hospital records.
Appointments
Patients are seen by appointment only. We do accommodate “work-ins” for urgent presentations but this may incur some extra wait time. If you are a new patient please arrive 20 minutes early to complete the necessary registration. Here’s a link to our registration Forms. We ask that you bring your insurance card to each visit and notify us of any changes to your address, phone number, and/or insurance information.
What To Bring To Your Appointment
There are times when either a referral to a specialist or an admission to the hospital requires changes in your medication. We therefore ask that you bring all the bottles of medications you are currently taking, as well as dietary supplements and/or vitamins. It is also important that you always bring you insurance card.
Reminders & Cancellations
As a courtesy, we call to remind patients of upcoming appointments. Patients will receive this notification 24-48 hours prior to their scheduled appointment. Please call if you are unable to keep you appointment or are going to be late. If you miss an appointment without prior notification we are unable to serve another patient at that time. This makes it difficult for us to provide the timely care all our patients deserve. We therefore ask that you kindly allow at east 24 hours notice for any cancellations.
Payment For Services
Co-pays must be paid at the time of service, as required by your insurance company, and will be collected before being seen by the provider. Payments for all other services are expected at the time of service unless prior arrangements have been made with the billing department. For your convenience, we accept cash, personal checks, Discover, MasterCard, and Visa for payments. Here is a link for Online payment.
We are participating providers with Medicare and most Medicare Advantage plans. Here’s a link to a list of Insurance companies we participate with. Our billing department will file your insurance claims for you, however, you are responsible for payment of services not covered by your insurance company such as your yearly deductible and co-pays.
For question regarding Insurance participation, payment arrangement or balance inquiries, please contact our billing department at 863-465-4413.
Prescription Refills
All medication refills are done during regular office hours only. Prescription refills will be processed within 24-48 hours of your request. Friday requests will be processed on Monday by the end of the day. After hours and weekend requests for controlled medication refills will not be processed by the practitioner on call. Please pay attention to the number of pills or refills left in your bottles. Your healthcare provider may want to see you before authorizing refills if it has been a while since your last visit or if blood tests need to be ordered while taking certain medicines.
After Hours Health Issues
In the event of an illness or health issue after hours, please call our answering service at 863-657-0677. The answering service will contact the on-call provider who will return your call. Keep in mind that technical difficulties and circumstances may not allow an immediate response. Therefore, if you feel you are having a life threatening emergency, please call 911.
Referrals To Specialists
Your healthcare provider will coordinate referrals to other specialists as needed. One of the many advantages of having a Family Physician is having a provider oversee and coordinate your care across the healthcare spectrum. We therefore kindly request that you keep your healthcare provider informed of referrals made for you by other providers who are not part of Family Medical Group, PA. Your assistance on this matter prevents duplication of services and reduces risks of medication errors.
Medical Records
If you are new to our practice, please have your previous doctors send your medical records to us as this will assist us with your continuity of care. Our front desk will gladly assist you with this process as well as provide you with the required registration Forms. Here’s a link to download the registration Forms prior to your visit.
Access to medical records is protected by Federal HIPAA regulations. Information about your medical care is provided only to those you list on the HIPAA Forms filed in your medical records.
Requests for copies of medical records will usually be processed within 7 business days upon completion of and Authorization for Release of Medical Records.
Request of records may be subject to a fee according to FL Statute 455. Exceptions may apply. For more information regarding applicable fees, please call one of our offices.
Medcial Forms
Our healthcare providers will be happy to complete medical forms requested by the patient such as Insurance Policies, Short Term Disability, FMLA, Certification Letters, etc. A charge of $20 will be incurred for our providers to complete any medical forms and will be payable before the forms can be completed. Please allow 15 business days for the completion of these forms.