New Patients

Expecting a child? Sunshine Pediatrics has Newborn Advice

Expecting?

Congratulations! Thank you for visiting our website. We couldn’t be more happy that we get to share our pride and joy with you. We welcome you to take a look around and learn all you can about us. Check out our Photo Gallery and what our patients’ parents are saying about us on Google, Facebook, and Instagram. As always, we invite you to our office for a prenatal tour. Use our contact form to request one today. Come see what all the buzz is about!

Forms & Policies for New Patients

If you already know you would like to come to our office once your baby is born, you can visit our Forms/Policies section to get all the paperwork you will need for your first visit. We don't require the paperwork in advance, but we will collect the forms at your first visit. Feel free to print and fill out the forms at home to save you time in the waiting room.

FAQ

What insurances do you take?
Please click here for a listing of the insurance companies and physician networks with whom we are contracted.
What should you know when choosing a pediatrician?
Trust is a key ingredient in the relationship between a child’s parent and their pediatric provider. In order to allow a trusting relationship to flourish, there are what we call the ‘office concerns’ that must be addressed in order to know that (a) our office will be there for you when you need us, (b) our office environment is safe, inviting, and clean for your child, and (c) we treat our families the way we would want to be treated when we go to a doctor’s office. To help address these concerns, below is a list of the most common questions we get during our prenatal tours. Call us today to schedule a prenatal tour: 803-980-7337 option 1.
Who will I get to see when I have an appointment?
In most cases, you can schedule your appointment with the provider you would like to see. However, we do recommend that you meet each provider to get to know them. Our providers share on-call duties, and it may be difficult to hear advice from someone you’ve never met in person. Like in an email, tone can be misunderstood. A phone conversation at 2:00 a.m. is hardly a good way to judge a provider’s true nature. A less talkative tone might leave you feeling insecure, and a more stern tone could leave you feeling intimidated. The truth will be somewhere in between, and without having met the provider in question, it’s hard to feel satisfied with that experience.
Will I be talking to a stranger after-hours?
No. Our own providers are there for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Our providers share their on-call duties, but never with an outside group or nursing hotline.
Do you provide same-day sick appointments?
Yes we do. We do many pro-active things to ensure that we can accommodate our patients when they need us. We analyze our patient appointment patterns regularly, and we adapt our schedules accordingly. We have different schedules for each season to allow for a larger number of sick visits in the winter, well visits in the summer, and a transition in fall and spring. We monitor patient flow throughout the day to make sure we’re keeping our wait-times down, optimizing our schedule and providing access to all of our patients no matter if it’s 8:30 a.m. or 3:30 p.m.
It is important to note that we do not schedule sick visit days ahead of time except for visits that typically involve in-depth discussion or counseling, like behavioral issues, bed-wetting, or chronic headaches. If your child is sick with a cold, possible ear infection, or upper respiratory infection, we don’t feel it’s advisable to wait for two days if you’re worried about it today. Our policy of providing same-day sick appointments gives you the peace of mind that we will be here when you need us.
Are your sick and well waiting rooms separated?
Yes they are. Please see our Photo Gallery to see pictures of our front reception area. You’ll also find that our office is full of murals that engage and entertain our patients. It can also provide a well deserved distraction to those children who just aren’t feeling at their best!
How long do we have to wait to be taken back for an appointment?
While there isn’t a set time that we can predict or promise to adhere to, if a wait time is over 20-25 minutes, we know that something could be wrong. We have several steps we can take to adapt to such a back-up in the schedule, and several polices that help us meet our low wait-time goals. Back-ups usually occur for various reasons. These may include a very sick patient who needs multiple treatments – which leaves one exam room out of the rotation. It could include a patient that needs ambulance transport for a direct admission to the hospital. It might even be because of a provider needing to spend just a little while longer reassuring a mom about a child’s illness. These things are just out of our control.
If this happens, waiting parents might be asked if they would like to see another provider who has a current opening, or if they would like to continue waiting. Also, we immediately modify the schedule to lower the wait time for upcoming appointments. We also enforce a 20-minute late policy for well visits. It’s not fair to a parent who arrives on time to have to wait longer to be seen because someone else’s tardiness was overlooked. We also limit walk-ins by scheduling those patients that do not need immediate attention at our next available opening. We also do not overbook to compensate for no-shows. Please read our Office Polices for further information detailing how committed we are to respecting your time. We don’t appreciate waiting at our doctors’ offices either!