After Hours

Emergencies

If you suspect poisoning and your child has collapsed or is not breathing, call 911 for an ambulance. Otherwise call Regional Center for Poison Control and Prevention at 1-800-222-1222, right away. You may call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Do not wait for the victim to look or feel sick. Do not try to treat the person yourself. For more information go to Regional Center for Poison Control and Prevention.

If you have an urgent concern after 5:00 PM, please call the office first. This will allow us to help decide the best level of care for your child. Many problems can be managed at home with appropriate phone advice. If we feel it necessary to have your child seen for evaluation, we can either arrange to meet you in our office or call ahead to the Emergency Room. This should make your child’s evaluation timely and complete. After 5:00PM when you call (401) 438-6888 you will reach our answering service who will send a text message to the on-call doctor. Please leave just one phone number when placing an after-hours call. Unblock any call-blocking feature on your phone and please have any pharmacy information readily available when the doctor returns your call. Calls are generally returned within 35-45 minutes. If you don’t receive a callback within that time frame or if your child condition worsens please call again.

After 10:00 PM, your calls will be referred to our after hours nurse triage service. This nurse triage service is a group of exceptionally well-trained and qualified nurses who address illness-related concerns for our patients. These nurses follow protocols based on the most current evidence-based information available. There is always a physician on-call. If you have concerns that cannot be addressed by these nurses, the on-call physician can be paged.

Our practice is available for emergencies on weekends and holidays as well. Generally, the on-call physician will be in the office for emergency visits Saturday, Sunday, and Holiday mornings. We do encourage you to call as early in the day as possible if you believe that your child has a concern that might warrant an office visit on weekends or holidays.