To Our Patients and Parents:
We hope you are enjoying the summer. In this letter we have four announcements.
In the past year and half Ashley Flynn, LMHC, has been a member of our practice to provide consultation to our patients and families on a variety of behavioral and psychological issues. She helped our patients tremendously by counseling in the areas of ADHD, anxiety, depression, parenting, and the like. Ashley now will be moving elsewhere and taking another position by the end of August. We are grateful for what she has given to our patients and will look forward to a future replacement counselor to fill her position. In the interim, we will utilize other mental health counselors in the area for our patients.
We are excited to announce that we will be changing our electronic medical record/information system to a new, more advanced system called Epic. This will begin at the end of August, 2017. As we are part of the PPOC, we will join many other pediatric practices around Boston in making this change. The decision was based on an agreement that a new system would help us deliver better service for patients. We are currently training for Epic and will make our best attempt toward a smooth transition. We ask our patients to be mindful of this as we work out the transfer of patient information. We may, during your next visit, need to update items such as insurance and contact information.
We have been providing free books to our patients starting at age 6 months until 5 years of age during the well child visits as part of the Reach Out and Read program. The purpose of the program is to promote reading by parents to children to encourage the joy of reading as well as language development. The program’s major source of funding in the past came from the state, while contribution from our own practice accounted for some 10-15% of the books. Then since the beginning of 2017 the state eliminated the funding entirely. Our practice is now shouldering the entire cost of the books. We are hoping that the state may renew the funding for 2018. Until then, I hope that some of our parents may donate some old children’s books that your children no longer read and help us sustain this program. You may bring the books in a paper bag and inform our front desk, so we can acknowledge your kindness.
We developed a new logo for our practice, as shown below. We hope you approve.
Sincerely,
Pediatric Associates of Malden