Developmental Ped - how often to go

[Anonymous]

I have a toddler that was recently diagnosed with ASD. We have had her thoroughly evaluated by a neurologist and at the NIH. We are looking for a developmental pediatrician to follow her. So far we only could get an appointment with a doctor at Georgetown, but the doctor has terrible reviews. We are on the wait list for Kennedy Krieger but was told it might be a month or so before we can get an appointment, which would involve further evaluations. I'm wondering if people would suggest waiting until we can find a development ped with good reviews to follow her (even if it takes several months) since her diagnosis has been confirmed and she has started therapy recommended by the NIH and MCITP or if there is a reason just to get her to see any developmental pediatrician. Any advice would be helpful.

Also, how often do you usually see a developmental pediatrician to measure progress, etc?

[Anonymous]

My child sees the Developmental Pediatrician twice a year. The wait to see a Dev Ped the first time may be as long as 6 - 8 months. It is about 7 months between appointments where we go now because they just have too many patients.

That being said at Kennedy Kreiger it didn't take that long to get an appointment and my child got a thorough evaluation, but we decided to stay with our current dev. ped at Children's Hospital - Laurel Lakes.

Why not get on the waiting list of some doctors who have good reviews. We see Dr. Gersh. He is not a fuzzy touchy feely person. I didn't particularly like him at first, but I like him very much now. He always reviews my kid's evaluations from other doctors before we get there. For example yesterday (we saw him), he talked about how my child has not seen a geneticist since he was 18 months (now almost 7) and I'm sure he didn't remember that, he went thru the files (at CNMC) to review about my child and make recommendations. He makes excellent recommendations. It took 1 day to get the first appointment because I called and found a cancelled appointment. So keep calling and asking for cancelled appointments, I was lucky but I also hung on to the phone for an hour while they tried to get that appointment for me. It otherwise would have been an 8 month wait. Get on some waiting lists for some doctors you find that are recommended.

[Anonymous]

Yearly for referrals only.

[Anonymous]

I'll be honest but we haven't seen our dev ped since DS was diagnosed at 4 with ASD. All DS's are met by his IEP, he gets OT and speech for pragmatics and has no academic or behavioral issues so we haven't seen a need to go back.

DS had neuropsych testing recently at 6 mostly to make sure we weren't missing something.

[Anonymous]

Normally DS goes every 6 months unless there is an issue. At first we were going every 3 months (first 3 visits). At one point it was 9 months.

[Anonymous]

We generally see our developmental ped, who we have been with for 3.5 years, every 6 months. Our child's issues have veered off into more neurological/medical than developmental at this point and i have other specialists on board, but i still like to check in with the developmental ped to keep the doctor updated on the situation, get input and feedback, enslist calls and help if necessary, and to sign paperwork as needed.

[Anonymous]

We see our devt ped every 6 months, but it could be every 3-4 if I pushed. We're military, at Walter Reed Bethesda.

[Anonymous]

Maybe once a year, but certainly at transition times/different grades to ensure we have a good assessment of current skill levels and can develop an IEP to meet our goals. Otherwise, I've found our developmental ped to be of limited utility and would prefer to devote time, effort, and money on therapies (physical, behavioral, and medical).