NOTE TO
CURRENT PATIENTS

First and foremost, I am eternally grateful to all my patients and families on so many levels. I have always felt that I have the best job in the world, and every day I am honored by your trust in me. Every day I’m inspired by the some aspect of the growth, vulnerability, fortitude, and determination by my patients and families. I am utterly privileged to work with each of you.

I am especially grateful for your understanding, patience, and compassion for the strain the pandemic added to mental health providers, and as all of you know, I am no exception, and have often felt that for nearly two years, I’m playing some sort of surreal Psychiatry Whack a mole, having the horrible decision each day to prioritize which patients are in the most crisis, and as many of you know, seeing patients at a rate that seems close to around the clock. Because there are only so many hours in a day, I am appalled that I have not been able to see my dear current patients at the frequency that I usually would in our pre-pandemic world. Many of you have somehow remained stable and have adapted stoically to prescriptions by auto pilot. You have been nothing but kind in your understanding my limitations as a solo practice psychiatrist practice in an over two-year-long pandemic. For many humans, the fallout of the pandemic may lie squarely in the land of mental health for years to come. I will always be grateful to your patience, and staying with me as we finally look with disbelief that we may be embarking to the other side.

I’ve been blown away by have so many of my families have thrived despite the massive stress put on them during this time. Yet another way You continue to inspire and amaze me! Your resiliency is contagious.

But now it’s time to dig out! And as we celebrate moving to a post-pandemic era, I am SO excited about BIG BIG CHANGES in how my practice will run…

We are now at full throttle implementing what I consider a rather major transition that will take us through the summer to fully accomplish. There will be glitches and frustrations, I imagine mostly on my part since we will totally be going green and into the mostly tech territory. It will be another life opportunity for me to practice what I preach to my patients and get to personally practice tolerating a lot more anxious distress. But for my patients, I'm hoping the transition will be pretty smooth. And the end result will hopefully be a well-oiled post-pandemic practice machine that makes your life easier.

We are switching to a PORTAL! Through the portal, you will be able to upload confidential reports and respond to outcome measure instruments I send you to optimally guide care and measure treatment response. My website here will be constantly changed over the next few months, to reach its optimal form later in 2022. As part of this change, I am radically revising my office policies. Well, maybe not radically. The changes are meant not only to bring my practice back to its pre-pandemic level of calm but to go further into a more straightforward post-pandemic era. The new portal, the revamped office policies, and the website links will make our communication, appointment scheduling, and refills way better than before. Importantly, payment will be applied at the time of service by charging the credit card linked to your portal. The portal will also allow you to view your payment history, complete with the diagnostic and service codes that you can submit to your insurance company.

To help me during this major portal and policy transition, I have hired an amazing Clinical Director, Dr. Tiffany Elias.

 

 

At first, Dr. Elias’ role will be to help you enroll in the Portal system, ensuring that you understand how it will be used for automatic credit card payments on the day of service. She will be helping you update your current contact information and sign a revised policy agreement. After the BIG CHANGE (my nickname for this transition), She will take the bold step of managing my appointment schedule and other administrative needs. Although Dr. Elias is remote, she is figuratively holding my hand through this process, and is not only a real rockstar but will also be my rock.

​

For now, sooner rather than later, please review the revised and still evolving Office Policies

 

Although the policy will be refined during the transition, it is important to have read through the initial plan so that we can regroup and work well together, with my constant goal to make your life easier. If you are having any insomnia lately, reading the refills and controlled medications section should be a great help in getting you to fall asleep.

 

Finally, in this draft revised policy, you will see the requirement that all patients must have visits scheduled at a minimum of every three months for me to be able to write a prescription. The reasons for this are clearly described. This was already my policy standard for the twenty years prior to the pandemic. If you have not had an appointment within the past 3 months, it is NOT YOUR fault, and much more likely it is because I have not been able to give you your much-deserved and overdue appointment because of my whack-a-mole and ridiculous schedule. I am grateful for your patience, and DO NOT WORRY: until I have got everyone in my practice back on track with scheduled appointments, per the office policy, if you are a current patient in good standing, I will of course refill your medicine, no charge of course.  (I really don’t know what I mean by “good standing”, but it gave me a good laugh to write it.) When I refill your medicine, I will give you an appointment. But please read the revised policy, so that we can turn this ship around ASAP.