We wanted to reach out to the patients of Ravalli Family Medicine to wish you all a wonderful holiday season. It is also a great time to update you on the happenings in our office.
COVID-19: We continue to perform drive up testing for COVID-19, in office evaluation of sick patients in a safe environment, and provide COVID-19 vaccinations. We anticipate all of these activities will continue in 2022, but we certainly hope most people will get vaccinated so we can decrease the health care burden this disease is placing on our facility and the rest of the community.
STAFFING: Ravalli Family Medicine was NOT immune to the staffing struggles that all businesses have faced in 2021. We also experienced a decrease in revenue due to lack of visits during 2020. These factors have led us to accept a smaller staff than we have had in previous years. As a patient of our office, we respectfully request you remain aware of how hard our staff are working when contacting them. We want to remind you of the following:
- Always communicate FIRST with your pharmacy about refills as they can easily send an electronic refill request that can be addressed MUCH faster than a request made with a phone call.
- We have 48 hours to respond to a refill request, unless they are made over long weekends, etc.
- Look at your prescription bottle BEFORE you make that request. If your prescription is over a year old, you may need a visit. All patients must be seen at least annually if they are on medication. Save yourself time and set up an office visit when you need those refills.
- Leaving multiple phone messages does not help get your questions answered quickly. The time it takes to listen to multiple messages takes time away from addressing those issues.
- We STRONGLY encourage you to utilize Updox, our online portal to your medical record. We are aware of its limitations, but direct messaging to your provider is easy to do and can allow a seamless communication between patients and providers.
- We also encourage you to utilize our telehealth service. This is a great way to communicate with your provider from the comfort of your own home.
- Lastly, rude behavior is NEVER acceptable and can be grounds for dismissal from our office.
We opened this office in 2004 and jokingly refer to it as our third child. We love the community of patients that we care for and consider them family. We appreciate your faith in us and look forward to providing medical care for the valley for years to come.
Dr. Lawrence Brouwer and Dr. Kathleen Harder-Brouwer