Please Read
→ All patients MUST wear a properly fitted mask.
→ Come alone, unless you need a translator; do NOT bring your children.
Getting to your appointment
We respect our patients’ time and are committed to staying on schedule as much as possible, but we need your help and understanding. We encourage our patients to arrive at least 10 minutes early for their appointment to take time for registration. You should consider allowing extra travel time for traffic and TTC delays, especially if you are coming at rush hour, and for finding your way, if it is your first visit, and you are unfamiliar with our location.
If you are late for your appointment, we will do our best to accommodate you, but sometimes if this would interfere with the timing of other patients’ appointments, it may be necessary to re-schedule your appointment to another day.
Sometimes despite everyone’s efforts to stay on schedule, there are unavoidable delays, such as occurs when patients are more complicated than we expected, or if emergency situations arise. Please know that we are doing everything we can in those situations to attend to you as efficiently and safely as possible.
Preparing for you appointment
Before your appointment, it may be helpful to think about the symptoms that may be bothering you, or any questions you might have about your condition. In order to fully understand and treat you, it is important that Dr Binkley knows about all of your other medical conditions, as these might have an impact on diagnosis and treatment options. It may be necessary for her to communicate with other doctors you may be seeing, so if you are seeing other doctors and specialists, please bring their contact information, if possible. It is also helpful if you bring in all of your medications, or at least a list of their names.
Please do not bring food or beverages into our office, unless they are completely sealed. Many of our patients have food allergies, and spills can be hazardous to them, especially small children.
If you find it challenging to describe your symptoms, or understand explanations about or recommendations for your condition, because you do not speak or understand English well, please consider bringing a family member or friend to come with you to translate. We want to make sure that you fully understand as much as possible about your condition, what further investigations are needed and why, and what treatments might be available to help you.
If you feel comfortable, we would ask that you not take any antihistamines (allergy tablets) for 2 to 3 days prior to your appointment in case allergy testing can be done. If you are uncomfortable when you stop your antihistamines you can continue to take them without stopping. Dr, Binkley can still assess your situation, and can make recommendations for treating you without allergy testing. She may be able to suggest other medications to control your symptoms so that the antihistamines can be stopped to allow testing in the future. DO NOT STOP your inhalers, or other medications as this can be dangerous. If you are seeing Dr. Binkley for chronic urticaria (chronic daily hives), you do not have to stop your antihistamines.
What to expect at your appointment
You will be asked to describe the symptoms or issues that concern you, your past and present other medical conditions, your medications, medication allergies, and your general health and family history of medical problems. Your first appointment is a consultation, and this information will be used to determine what investigations, if any, might be required or helpful. A physical examination will be performed. Allergy testing may or may not be recommended, and might occur at the first visit, a subsequent one, or may require testing at a hospital, depending on the nature of your problems. Bloodwork, Xrays, ultrasounds, breathing tests, or referrals to other specialists might also be advised. Dr Binkley will review with you which of these investigations are to be done and why, and may suggest treatment options at your first visit, or may defer treatment till investigations are completed, depending on your situation.
Your first visit will likely take about half an hour, but the length of the appointment may be shorter or longer depending on the nature of your problems. Follow-up visits are usually shorter, about 10 to 15 minutes, but can be longer. If you are experiencing an entirely new problem that you wish to address at a follow-up visit, please let us know in advance, as it may be necessary to allow extra time to sort out such things.
Some medications and some medical conditions may interfere with, or make allergy testing inadvisable. Dr. Binkley will need to do a full assessment of your situation before deciding whether or not to move ahead with any allergy testing. It is sometimes necessary to change or stop certain medications, or address other medical issues before allergy testing or pulmonary function tests can be done safely and reliably. It may be necessary for Dr. Binkley to confer with your other doctors to determine how to best proceed in these cases.
After your appointment
We will help to make sure that you understand if there are things you need to do after your appointment, such as getting laboratory tests, pulmonary function tests, X rays, ultrasounds, specialized testing at the hospital, appointments with other specialists, or follow-up with your family doctor. We ask that our patients schedule a follow-up appointment after any investigations, as Dr. Binkley will want to discuss with you the results and determine if there are additional tests or changes in treatment to be made.
After your appointment, Dr Binkley will prepare a report to go back to your referring physician, and any other physicians that needs to be involved. If your referring physician is not your family physician, we encourage you to give us their name and fax, so they are aware of any recommendations in Dr. Binkley’s report. Usually the report is prepared on the day of your appointment, and faxed to your other doctors the next office day, so there is timely communication regarding the management of your care.
Changing or cancelling appointments
We understand that sometimes it is necessary to re-schedule or even cancel an appointment, and are happy to assist you when these situations arise. We do not overbook patient appointments, as sometimes occurs in other practice settings, which allows us to stay on schedule most of the time. But this means that your appointment time is reserved just for you, and if you do not arrive, that time slot will go unused, and result in other patients on our waiting list, who could have benefited from that appointment, unnecessarily waiting to be seen at a later date. So if you need to re-book or cancel an appointment, please let us know as soon as possible, so we can give that appointment to someone else in need.