Please Help Us Make Your Office Visits Safe and Productive

Have you ever shown up totally unprepared for a business meeting or a class? Perhaps the meeting coordinator failed to let you know what the meeting was going to be about, giving you no opportunity to prepare questions or come up with ideas. Or maybe you didn’t complete the assignment for a class and couldn’t answer the instructor’s questions or participate in the class discussion. The experience is agonizing, and you probably didn’t get as much out of it as you would have if you had known the benefits of preparing in advance.

Here at Restoration Healthcare, a functional medicine practice in Irvine, we collaborate closely with our patients to optimize the time we spend together. To get the most out of your healthcare appointments, we strongly encourage you to prepare for each one, so we can address all your questions and concerns as effectively and efficiently as possible. We also want you to be aware of our office policies regarding COVID, so we can protect you, our staff, and our other patients from infection.

In this post, we let you know specifically what you can do to help us make your telemedicine and clinic visits as helpful as possible.

Preparing for Your Appointment and Asking Questions

The best appointments start and end with your questions. To help us address all your health issues and concerns, please follow these tips to prepare for your appointment:

• Sign into your OnPatient Portal account at least two business days prior to your appointment to do the following:
  • Fill out or sign any forms provided. Please don’t arrive at our clinic or connect online for a telehealth visit without first checking for forms and completing or signing them prior to your appointment. For example, we often need you to fill out a follow-up diagnostic form, COVID screening form, or sign a consent form prior to your appointments.
  • Submit any questions or concerns you have following the guidelines presented in the next bullet item. This gives your doctor time to review your questions prior to seeing you.
• When submitting questions, please always follow these guidelines:
  • Keep it “short, sweet, and to the point.” Limit questions to one or two short sentences — notone or two paragraphs. Long “dialogue” messages can sometimes result in more confusion than clarity.
  • Write or type your question outside the OnPatient Portal before entering it as a message via the Portal. Please do everything possible to shorten the message.
  • Select your doctor before submitting your message. The default setting on messages is Dr. Raleigh, so if Dr. Raleigh is not your Restoration Healthcare doctor, you must use the OnPatient dropdown menu to change the name to your doctor (for example, Dr. Faraj or Dr. Kurmanalieva). Otherwise, your message could be delayed in getting to your doctor or their medical assistant.
• Ask follow-up questions near the end of your appointment. If you have any questions or need further clarification about anything you and your doctor discussed during your appointment, please ask those questions near the conclusion of your appointment. We don’t want you to leave your appointment with any unanswered questions or lack of clarity about what we recommend or prescribe.
• Between appointments, submit any questions or concerns via the OnPatient Portal. If you believe something cannot wait until your next appointment, please submit your queries via the Portal following the guidelines presented earlier.

Request: We ask that, instead of sending multiple messages through the OnPatient Portal, you compile them and send one complete message containing only the essential questions to which you require answers.

Following Our Office Rules

We want you and our other patients to be as comfortable and worry-free as possible during clinic appointments, including IV treatments. To make that happen, please follow our rules of clinic etiquette:

• Upon arrival, always check in at the front desk and wait for one of our staff members to welcome you and direct you to the proper area of our clinic. Rest assured that as soon as you arrive and check in, you’ll be in good hands. Greeting you and personally guiding you to the location of your appointment within the clinic, or to the IV lounge ourselves, is essential to a safe and meaningful appointment.
• If you plan to talk while waiting for your appointment, use the IV lounge to the left of the front desk. If you plan to place or receive phone calls or interact with other patients, this lounge is the place to be. If you feel like being social during your IV appointment, we get it. Talking with someone else may help pass the time and put you at ease. If you know that you’ll need to take or place a call during your appointment, please tell us that at the start of your appointment.
• If you want peace and quiet, use the IV lounge to the right of the front desk. The IV lounge to the right of the front desk is designated as a quiet space — no phone calls or conversation is allowed.
• Wear a mask or face covering. By order of the Orange County Health Director, and in compliance with recommendations from the CDC, wearing a mask or face covering while at Restoration Healthcare is required. This includes while you’re in the IV lounges. Great care should be taken when in the clinic, and that means wearing a mask or face covering at nearly all times! The one exception is covered next.
• You may remove your mask or face covering only to take a bite of food or sip of a beverage. We realize that you may need to consume a snack or drink while in one of the IV lounges. In those instances, masks and face coverings may be momentarily slipped to the side for a bite or sip of a beverage. However, you are not permitted to uncover your mouth and nose for the duration of a meal or the amount of time it may take to consume a beverage.

We appreciate your cooperation. Preparing for your appointment and asking the right questions in the proper format enables us to optimize the outcomes of all patient visits, whether in-person at our clinic or online during virtual office visits. And practicing proper clinic etiquette helps us to ensure safe, comfortable, and worry-free visits for all our patients.