Referrals can be made by your primary care provider if they fax, mail, or call us directly [see form for office referrals].  Once a referral has been made, you should expect to hear from our office within 2-3 business days.  We make every effort to book appointments as urgently as the referral suggests.  Different problems are given different urgency, and the length of some appointments also vary.

If you have not heard from our office in a timely period:

Call our office to find out if the referral has been received.

If you are displeased with the length of wait for your appointment:

Speak to your primary care practitioner, as the referral may have not expressed clearly the urgency for being seen.  Your practitioner can always call our office themselves, or page Dr Menard directly, if they want an appointment made sooner.

If you were asked to complete forms in advance:

These forms are all available on this web site.  You can download them here and return them to the office once completed.  You can also come to the office to get them, or ask your practitioner to print them for you.

A follow up appointment is only arranged under special circumstances when we need to review test results, response to medications, or to complete an evaluation.  Most consultations will have only one visit planned. If a review is required, it will usually be planned at the time of your initial Consultation visit.

If you have a follow up requested by Dr Menard, it is time-limited (usually 10-15 minutes). Therefor, children who require a re-evaluation of their problems, or an opportunity to consult with us for a new problem, need to see their primary care provider once more, to request a proper consulting appointment.  See Re-Referrals, below.

If your child has not been seen for six months or more, or develops a new problem in the meantime, you should ask your primary care physicians for a new referral.  This may seem frustrating to many, but it serves a number of purposes: 

 1) It ensures that you will have a complete  consulting appointment, rather than a review appointment.  Many children with chronic health conditions need these longer appointments to be properly assessed.

2)  It ensures that your families primary care practitioner is still involved, and aware of your child's ongoing health issues.  This is essential to your child's care, as  our office may not always be available for you, and if your child needs to be seen urgently in the future you might need to see your family practitioner first.

3) The appointments in our office are essentially determined by the needs of the community primary care practitoners.  In other words, they are the ones who often decide which children we see, how urgently, and how often.  Therefor, they need to be the ones deciding if and when a re-referral is necessary.