Dr. Levenstein, Dr. Liddy, Dr. Shapiro and Dr. Julian Tang will respond to your calls during regular office hours. In case of evening emergencies, we share calls with four pediatricians in the community (with practices similar to ours).
All on-call doctors are committed to providing guidance and comfort after-hours. Our colleagues utilize an answering service at night, however, we utilize a phone system that will allow your emergent calls to be patched to us directly without delay. We are notified of your non-urgent calls through our messaging system, and return non-urgent calls within an hour. Please take into account that your calls may be returned a bit later from our community colleagues. However, your emergent calls will be returned immediately.
An emergency call should be placed if your child is bleeding uncontrollably, unconscious, having a seizure, possible poisoning or cannot breathe; in addition, if your child has a chronic medical condition in crisis, or if your infant under 12 weeks of age has a fever (over 100.5 degrees rectally), or extreme irritability, recurrent vomiting, or a major change of state, an emergent call should be placed. If you are calling after 10pm, please only do so if there is a true emergency – please utilize the option on the phone for “true medical emergency” if that is the case.
Please refrain from calling at night to make or cancel appointments, renew prescriptions, or to discuss chronic complaints, routine newborn questions, or long-term concerns. These discussions are best dealt with during regular office hours. When other doctors are on call, one of us can still be reached if there is an extraordinary need. Be assured, on call or not, we are here for you.
Call Courtesy
If your child has a true medical emergency, call 911 immediately and then call us to inform us that you have summoned paramedics. If we have not responded within 15 minutes, please call again.
- If you have an urgent call that doesn’t require paramedics, but requires an immediate call-back (ie very ILL child, worrisome injury, febrile seizure, possible ingestion) please utilize the emergency option on the phone
- Please allow us up to 60 minutes to return your non-emergent calls—make sure you leave us the phone number to which you expect our call. Please include your area code and repeat your number clearly and distinctly so we are sure we have the right number. You might want to consult selfcare.net on our website before placing your call...this is a valuable resource for routine health/illness questions.
- If you place a call to the doctor, please keep the line open so that we may reach you immediately.
- Please remember to turn off your answering machine; we value the opportunity to speak with you personally.
- If you have call-blocking, please include that in your message (* 82).
- Always have a 24 hour pharmacy number available, so that we may assist you if your child needs a prescription during evening/night hours.