Reply to general practice pediatrician willing to prescribe ADHD meds (DC preferred)

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
I preferred to wait to get an accurate evaluation, and receive expert medication advice from a psychiatrist. A general ped is not an expert, can mis-diagnose your child, and fail to pick the right medication, at the right dose, for your child. It can be tricky, because different children react differently and can have a host of side-effects.

[/quote]

Yup.

OP, honestly, it just sounds like you are trolling for drugs.  You'll probably get more insurance coverage going through KKI or Children's.

Search NIH clinical trails, if you're actually serious about helping your kid.[/quote]

Not OP, but you're totally right, a parent with a desire not wait 9 months to address something that is treatable and one assumes (given the desire to address) interfering with home and/or school is totally just a drug troll who isn't even remotely serious about helping his/her kid.  ???  Let's try something like, OP, yes there might be pediatricians out there who can trial meds.  Probably a good idea to see if you can't get in with a psychiatrist first though, since often more expertise is needed.  But I totally recognize that mental health care in this country, particularly on insurance, sucks and so it's sometimes virtually impossible to find a child psychiatrist on a reasonable timeframe.  Probably a good idea in that case to get on waitlists, for children's and KKI and psychiatrists, so you can grab whatever comes up first, and also maybe try XYZ because I'm a decent human being whose trying to be helpful so let me throw out some actual ideas you can use without being a total twit.

Anyway, OP....  Georgetown psychiatry is accepting new kids for ADHD stuff, may likely be on your insurance, the key is that you need to call when they open their calendar for the next month or so - I think that's at the beginning of the month.  I forget how far out it is, but it's not even close to a 9 month wait.  Might be an idea to try.  Same with children's.  You can also see if there are any in network child psychiatrists accepting new patients - we couldn't find one, but our network is pretty awful.  For peds, CP&A in DC has a child psychologist they work for - not sure if she'd diagnose at the least, and then maybe they'd be willing to trial meds - but she's on maternity leave.  May be worth a call to see if they have someone filling in.  The pediatrician herself there wouldn't consider diagnosis/meds for us directly, but we're on the very young side, so that made sense, and they suggested we start with their psych (we got into KKI just after that, so never ended up doing that).

An ADHD eval out of pocket with a psychiatrist may also be much less expensive than one of the developmental peds, I don't know.  Not sure if there's any ability to cover anything OOP.   Also worth getting on the wait/cancellation lists for some of the longer wait places - we got into KKI within 2-3 months, but got 3 cancellation calls before we got one we could take so conceivably could have been sooner.  You may also be able to get in back door - say, by starting with their behavioral psych department in Columbia, who obviously can't prescribe (I think), but once you're in their system, the wait for someone who can may be much shorter.  We started with behavioral psych and saw a developmental ped within 2 weeks of that first appointment.  Might be worth a call to ask if that's an option - if you see beh psych (for some intervention ideas, I'd not say out front its just to back door things) and they think an eval or look at treatment is warranted, can they do a referral in a quicker period of time?  Given the distance, KKI will likely seek ultimately to transfer you back to your ped (they are with us) but only once meds are settled, at which point you've gotten some of the expertise and your ped has some assurance - if they're unwilling to do initial eval and medication trial themselves - that someone with the expertise has set up the program.

It's a PITA, that's for sure, and really shouldn't take so long to get some decent help, it's definitely a huge issue.[/quote]

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