Developmental Pediatrician

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone-

I posted about a week ago regarding my DD's concern for autism, and a follow up meeting today with Child Find checked all the boxes for autism. I'd like to get the ball rolling on finding a developmental pediatrician to get her medically diagnosed so we can use private services if need to (hoping that insurance will cover some). Can anyone recommend any? I've tried contacting Chidren's, Krieger Kennedy, but they both will need to call me back. There was one other office in Fairfax that has a year waiting list, and I will also try UVA. Anywhere else I need to look? This is so daunting!

Thank you!

[Anonymous]

We are patients at Pediatric Associates of Alexandria and were able to get in with Dr. Lowry Shropshire fairly quickly.

Good luck OP! You may be able to get speech/OT covered privately while you wait -- we were. Where do you live? This board can recommend some spots.

[Anonymous]

Dr. Shropshire has a pretty long wait list, although it’s definitely not as long as some places. We waited about 10 months for an appointment in total. I am pretty sure you have to be a regular patient of PAA to go to him.

In the meanwhile, you should be able to get your regular pediatrician to write you a prescription for private speech and OT. If your kid is at least 2 you can get an IEP and services through the schools, which in FCPS would either be the half day special needs preschool or the preschool autism class, depending on your child’s needs, and they are both really good programs.

[Anonymous]

I’m not in DC area but, unfortunately, waited 7 months for first visit with developmental ped (whom we now see every 6 months). I think those kinds of waits are typical.

[Anonymous]

It took about 10 months with KKI and 12 months with CHOP. Depending on your insurance CHOP was well worth the wait. We have Federal Blue Cross and so CHOP was in network for us. Another that you may try is Mount Washington Children’s Hospital as they had the earliest appointment, but it got canceled due to the start of COVID. We did KKI,but was not impressed with developmental pediatrician. They did speech evaluation and recommended OT, but we never did OT as they only had virtual for a while. We did in person Nueropsych eval at KKI and was also not impressed. The school psychoeducational evaluation had to capture things KKI just did not capture to determine learing disability. We love our developmental pediatrician at CHOP and see her yearly now so worth the trip to Philly. She is very responsive and supports us with what ever we need.

Good luck!

[Anonymous]

You typically don’t need a diagnosis to start services for SLP, OT, PT, ABA, etc. If you have the resources I’d go ahead and get some therapies started. All those providers would (should) do their own assessments and determine your child’s specific needs.

You can always find someone willing to do fewer hours for now with a focus on parent training that can teach you how to run a lot of programs on your own until your insurance is able to cover additional hours. It might not be a perfect solution but starting earlier is better as a general rule.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You typically don’t need a diagnosis to start services for SLP, OT, PT, ABA, etc. If you have the resources I’d go ahead and get some therapies started. All those providers would (should) do their own assessments and determine your child’s specific needs.

You can always find someone willing to do fewer hours for now with a focus on parent training that can teach you how to run a lot of programs on your own until your insurance is able to cover additional hours. It might not be a perfect solution but starting earlier is better as a general rule.

ABA will be very expensive without insurance.