Bellingham OB/GYN would like to announce that our physicians will be sharing on-call duties with Dr. Hull Cook beginning in March. This will allow Dr. Cook to continue his private practice and exceptional Ob care until his retirement in 2011. Many of you may be familiar with Dr. Cook as he has been a treasured member of our community, delivering babies since 1981.
We would also like to share that St. Joseph Hospital has implemented a full time, in-house OB/GYN position at the Childbirth Center. This will allow any patient coming to the childbirth center needing immediate medical attention, efficient on the spot medical care and expertise. Our physician on-call will be notified of your arrival at the childbirth center as always and will be there for your care and delivery. If you have further questions regarding either of these changes, please do not hesitate to ask.
Welcome to Bellingham Obstetric and Gynecologic Associates
Our practice is devoted to specialized women's health care. This includes routine and high risk prenatal care and delivery, routine gynecologic health maintenance and education, contraception, infertility, related endocrinology, and gynecologic surgery. We are trained to assess and treat premenstrual symtpoms (PMS), menstrual difficulties, menopause, sexuality concerns, pelvic pain, vaginal infections, sexually transmited disesases, and urinary incontinence.
We are five physicians and one nurse practitioner who practice together as a group. While one individual can not always be available, as a group we provide fully-trained specialty care on a 24-hour basis. One of us will always be available to assist and care for you in emergency situations. We each have many years of specialty training in obstetrics and gynecology, are members of professional organizations limited to trained specialists in this field, and maintain our competency by active participation in continuing medical education programs.
APPOINTMENTS & SCHEDULE
Office hours are by appointment and our office telephone is answered by our receptionist during regular office hours, 8:00 to 5:00, Monday through Friday. When calling to schedule an appointment, please give as much information as possible so that the proper amount of time may be allotted for your visit. Although appointments for routine exams or for the evaluation of long term problems may need to be scheduled several weeks in advance, we reserve time each day to see patients for acute or urgent problems, so please let our receptionist know if you feel that your situation is urgent. If you are unable to keep your appointment we would appreciate your calling to cancel as soon as possible so that we might utilize that time for someone else who may be in need of an appointment.
We try to keep to a schedule as much as possible so that our patients do not have long waits in our office. As a result, if you are late, your appointment will probably need to be rescheduled. Also, if you have a long list of problems and time becomes short, we will ask you to pick out the ones that you want to concentrate on with the understanding that you may have to reschedule for the rest of the list.
Before the appointment please check:
1. Do you need a referral from your primary care provider? Many managed care plans require referrals. If so, please bring your written copy of the referral. Check to see that it has not expired and what health concerns are listed. Referrals are unfortunately limited to those conditions. If you have other concerns, they must be listed on the referral for us to address them.
2. Are you on any current medications? To avoid drug interactions, please bring the names and dosages of any prescription medications that you are currently taking.
3. Do you need to make a co-payment? We request that you be prepared to make a co-payment at the time of your appointment. To make it easier, we accept cash, personal checks, Visa, MasterCard, and American Express.
4. Do you have insurance? If so, bring your insurance card (see "Insurance" below). If not, please plan to pay at time of service or call to set up a payment plan.
Insurance
We have contracted with the most common insurance companies in the area. Please verify with bookkeeping that we contract with yours if you have not already done so. We will submit claims for you. Please note that it is your responsibility to know and understand the benefits, limitations, referral and prior authorization requirements of your policy. We find that they change quite often. For non-contracted insurance companies, we will bill them just once as a courtesy, but after that any balance owing is your responsibility. We would be happy to give you a copy of your bill for your records or to submit to your carrier. We currently do not bill for Tricare (CHAMPUS).
Rescheduling / Canceling an Appointment
If you need to cancel or change an appointment, kindly give us 48 hours notice so we can offer the space to another patient. Please be aware that we frequently need to reschedule appointments due to surgeries and sometimes deliveries. Although we regret having to do this, it is the nature of an OB/GYN specialty, and at the current time there are not enough OB physicians to meet the demand. We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your understanding. New patients that NO SHOW, will be charged a 50.00 fee to reschedule. Thank you. We look forward to meeting you.