After Hours

Emergencies After Hours

If you have a life-threatening medical emergency, call 911.

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After Hours Illnesses

Kids often are sick after hours. Even if our office is closed, we still offer many resources to assist you.

Online Symptom Checker

The online KidsDoc Symptom Checker may provide you with an answer to your question or concern.

KidsDoc Symptom Checker

Contacting Our Office

If you have a non-life-threatening medical emergency after hours, call our office at 770-995-0823. We are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. During office hours, the GPAM advice nurses will answer your concerns.

If you call our office after hours, you will be connected with our answering service.

Insurance Company Advice Nurses

Our answering service has a list of after-hours non-emergency advice lines offered by the major insurance companies. The number can also be found on your insurance card.

CHOA Advice Nurses

If you do not have access to the advice from one of the major insurance companies, the answering service will arrange for you to speak with a pediatric phone advice nurse from Children's Healthcare of Atlanta (CHOA). To do this, you will need to give the answering service a phone number where you can be reached. It may take up to one hour for the CHOA nurse to call you. If you feel unable to wait, you should take your child to the closest pediatric emergency room.

The pediatric advice nurses are very well trained to handle after-hours emergency calls. If the CHOA nurse has any concerns about your child, he/she will arrange through our answering service to have the GPAM on-call pediatrician paged. It may take up to one hour for the pediatrician to call you back. If you feel unable to wait, then you should take your child to the closest pediatric emergency room.

Because GPAM is charged a fee for every call our patients make to the CHOA advice service, we may charge you a $15.00 non-emergency fee for any non-emergent after-hours call. Remember: We have advice nurses in the office as a courtesy to you during office hours.

GPAM's On-call Pediatrician

The GPAM pediatricians take turns being the on-call pediatrician. Thus, the on-call pediatrician is unlikely to be the same pediatrician you may have seen in the office. The on-call pediatrician is not at the office or hospital. The on-call pediatrician is at home and receives text messages from the answering service. The answering service sends a message to the pediatrician with your child's name, phone number, and a brief statement about what your call is regarding.

If you have caller ID block on your phone, it MUST be disabled to get a return call from the on-call pediatrician. If you do not disable the caller ID block on your phone, you will not be able to speak with the pediatrician. At times, the on-call pediatrician may call you from a number that is not blocked. It is NOT acceptable to call the pediatrician back at that number. If you need to speak with the pediatrician again, call the office number and notify the answering service.

If you previously spoke to a CHOA nurse, the CHOA nurse has not relayed any information to the on-call pediatrician.

As the on-call pediatrician receives many pages, it is important to present your reason for calling clearly and succinctly. The pediatrician will ask you questions. Your child should be with you at the time of the call. You should inform the pediatrician if your child has any chronic medical problems (i.e. diabetes, congenital heart disease). The on-call pediatrician cannot make a medical diagnosis over the phone. He/she can only provide limited advice. The pediatrician may advise that your child be seen at a pediatric emergency room.

The on-call pediatrician will NOT call in medications. There are NO exceptions. If you feel your child needs a prescription medication after hours, then your child must be seen. We do NOT call in refills of any medications after hours. There are NO exceptions. You must call the office during normal business hours for medication refills.

Pediatric Emergency Rooms

If your child has more urgent needs after hours, we recommend that your child be seen either at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta (CHOA) or Northside Hospital's Children's Emergency Center in Lawrenceville.

Children's Healthcare of Atlanta

CHOA has three pediatric emergency rooms and many urgent care centers where you child can be seen. You can get more information by calling 404-250-KIDS.

Northside Hospital's Children's Emergency Center

Northside Hospital has a Lawrenceville Children's Emergency Center. You can get more information by calling 678-312-4382.

Children's Emergency Center
1000 Medical Center Blvd
Lawrenceville, GA 30046

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