Please take a moment to review our clinic policies to ensure you receive timely and appropriate care.
APPOINTMENTS:
- Please do not drop in for an appointment, call first. We have same-day and same-week appointments for your convenience.
- Please ask the receptionist if you wish for more than one family member to be seen. We will try to accommodate you if time permits; however, you may be asked to book another appointment.
- Please cancel if you are unable to attend so that the appointment can be opened up for someone else. Patients will be billed for missing an appointment without proper notification 24 hours in advance.
- For patient safety reasons and out of respect to everyone’s time we ask you to book additional appointments if you have multiple health concerns or issues to discuss. That way we can provide each problem appropriate amount of attention.
- We expect that you will make every effort to make any appointments that you book at the clinic, and we will make every effort to see you in a timely fashion. Please note that your appointment may need to be re-booked if you are more than 15 minutes late.
PHONE CALLS:
- Please note that messages left on the reception’s answering machine will not be returned. Only leave a message to cancel an appointment or to notify the office about an issue, which does not require a response.
- For urgent appointments, please call as early in the day as possible, e.g. before 10 A.M.
- Please make other non-urgent calls in the afternoon when the phones are less busy.
LAB RESULTS:
- Once results are in our office, a physician reviews it and will contact any patient who requires follow up. Most normal results do not require follow up.
- We do not routinely call patients to report normal results. Please note it can take up to two weeks for our office to receive reports, other reports and letters from specialists can take up to one month to arrive in our office. A physician reviews all reports and patients are contacted if further follow up is required.
- If you are concerned about test results and have not heard from our office, please contact us to see if reports have been received and if you need to book a follow up
UNINSURED SERVICES:
Unfortunately, not all health-related services are covered by OHIP. For some services we have to charge you directly.
The list of common uninsured services can be found here Charing Cross uninsured services list 2018. You can also find the same list posted in all examination rooms or can ask for a copy at the reception. Common examples include sick notes, driver’s physicals, prescriptions for massage, physiotherapy or orthotics when not medically required, treatment of skin tags or warts, travel advice, use email for MD advice, or filling out forms.
We will inform you about the charge before we proceed. We expect payment before any service provided or form completed. We take cash, personal checks, debit and major credit cards.
TREATMENT BY ANOTHER DOCTOR OR NURSE PRACTITIONER (NP) IN THE PRACTICE:
Charing Cross Medical™ is a group multidisciplinary practice. While we always book patients with their own medical provider when possible, if your own family physician is not available on a given day, one of our other family physicians or Nurse Practitioners (NP) will see you.
Nurse practitioners are fully qualified medical providers with postgraduate university studies in nursing who are qualified to assess, diagnose, and treat patients within a defined scope of practice. Our Nurse Practitioner(s) work closely with family physicians; NPs may perform annual physical exams, write prescriptions, order a variety of diagnostic and screening tests and performs specific procedures. They focus on health promotion, disease and injury prevention, and manage various health issues including acute illnesses and injuries.
When your treating physician is away for more extended time, you may see a covering “locum” physician or get medical advice from “on-call” physician. Please be assured our covering doctors follow the same principles of confidentiality and privacy as your own physicians.
We may have medical students or resident doctors in our clinic for training purposes. If you do not want to see a student or resident doctor, please inform the staff and we accommodate your request for that visit.
CONFIDENTIALITY:
Our patients can expect the highest level of confidentiality from our office. You must provide written, witnessed authorization in order to release your medical information to anyone (even a parent, a counselor, or a spouse), unless you are with the person at the time of disclosure.
All information disclosed to a physician or a nurse is treated as confidential and private and cannot be release to anyone (including family members or parents of capable children), unless consented by the patient or required by law.
TERMINATION:
Termination of the patient-physician relationship can be done at any time and can be initiated by either party. If a patient feels that the relationship is not productive, they can seek a new doctor. The physician can equally decide if the relationship is not effective, and if necessary, will notify the patient.
Other situations that may result in a decision to end patient-physician relationship include:
- Patient fraud, such as for the purpose of obtaining narcotics or other drugs,
- Serious threat of harm to the physician, staff and/or other patients;
- Other forms of inappropriate behaviour towards the physician, staff or other patients;
- Conflict of interest that compromises the physician’s duty to put the interests of patients first;
- A communication breakdown that makes it impossible to provide quality care.
- Consistently missed appointments or non-compliance with medical treatment or recommendations that make it unsafe to provide medical care for a given patient.Zero Tolerance for Abuse or Violence
We value the work done by our staff and feel that both our staff and patients deserve a respectful environment. The physicians and management have a zero tolerance for abuse of our staff. Any verbal or physical expression of anger, violence or threatening behaviour to our staff or other patients will result in termination of patient-physician relationship.
COMMUNICATION BY EMAIL:
Dr. Ivan Shcherbatykh is currently using email for direct patient contact. If you are interested in communicating with Dr. Ivan and his team via email please read the following policies:
- You must be a patient of Dr. Ivan Shcherbatykh
- You have to read and sign physician-patient email communication consent form (available here – PDF file), and return it to the clinic in person or via email reception@charingcrossmedical.com
- You fully understand and agree that email should not be used for urgent questions or medical concerns, that email correspondence is only monitored during usual office hours and that email response to questions may take up to seven business days.
- Dr. Ivan Shcherbatykh reserves the right to terminate any patient’s email privilege at his discretion if this particular patient fails to adhere to the communication policies.
- Email service, particularly if health advice requested by a patient, is not OHIP covered service, and as such a fee will be applied and billed to patient directly for use of email for obtaining physician advice without having to schedule an appointment. For fee list for 2016 please click here.
- Email should not be used to book appointments or request specialist referrals, these requests should be directed to our reception staff either by phone or email.