What’s New at Legacy Pediatrics in 2019?

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Happy New Year to everyone from Legacy Pediatrics! We hope you all had a fun and restful holiday season. I wanted to update our families on some new things going on with us at Legacy Pediatrics in 2019.

One of the first things you will notice is our new logo! We are excited about our new branding! We used a local graphic designer (and mom) to help us get a better match for what we represent here at Legacy.

If you’ve been to the office lately, you may have noticed our brand-new floors and fresh paint on the walls! The winter salt and wet boots took a toll on our old floors and the new ones will hopefully wear better and with a new, modern look.

In terms of Legacy’s services, we are continuing our work in the important area of pediatric research. In fact we are currently enrolling 2 month-old children for a meningitis vaccine study and will soon start up a study evaluating a new rapid influenza test.

New in 2019 are updates to New York State daycare and school forms. We are formatting these into our EMR system and can print at your child’s physical. These forms will also be available to you on our Patient Portal (via our website) so you can download and print at your leisure.

Speaking of physicals, Legacy has started calling families when a child’s birthday is coming up to remind you to schedule your child’s physical. Everyone is programmed to get their infant, toddler and young child in for their physicals so that we can monitor development, answer questions and administer vaccinations. But once your child reaches school age, sometimes we forget! It remains very important that your child get a yearly physical around the time of their birthday. These appointments allow us to be able to check in with your child to monitor their school progress, emotional and physical health and administer vaccinations. There are a number of vaccinations that are tied to a specific age, so it continues to be important to schedule your child’s physical around the time of their birthday.

There is some confusion about the timing of physicals for pre-teens and teens who participate in school sports. Parents are occasionally told from schools to schedule the physical in July or August in order for their child to be able to participate in school sports. That is simply not true! The yearly physical is “good” for an entire year from the end of the month of the physical. For example, if your child is born in February, a physical done in February 2019 is “good” until the end of February 2020. Your child is eligible to participate in school sports for the Spring sports season that school year and the Fall and Winter sports in the following school year using that physical form. It’s also unrealistic for us to be able to do all school aged children’s physicals in just two months! Hence, our push to try to match up physicals with birthday month.

You will also find some interesting and pertinent articles given out at childhood physicals. Parenting is hard, so if we find some helpful information, we like to pass it along to you.

The last comment about physicals is that nearly all insurance companies cover one physical a calendar year for children, pre-teens and teens older than 14. We want to be the best “medical home” for your child and their needs and love to see them grow! Summers are our most popular time for physicals to be booked and therefore, can be busy and openings are less. We ask that you call and book your appointments a few months in advance, so we can accommodate everyone’s needs!