Office Policies & Procedures

Hume Street Health is committed to provide a safe and respectful environment for patients and staff. As such, there is a zero-tolerance policy for abusive, threatening, or disruptive language or behaviour towards our staff or other patients.  In accordance with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) policy, failure to abide by our policy may result in your immediate dismissal from our practice.

Appointments can be booked by phone or online (Dr. Dobson's patients only). We ask patients not to call the office during the first hour our phone lines are open (ie 9-10am), unless it is for an urgent same-day or next-day appointment request or when calling to cancel an appointment. At 10am, we will accept calls not related to booking an appointment or for booking routine appointments in advance. 

We require 24 hours notice to cancel an appointment, otherwise a missed appointment fee will apply. This applies to all appointment types, including phone appointments. For missed appointment fee details, please see our fee guide. 

Appointment reminder emails are provided for patients of Dr. Dobson's in an effort to reduce missed appointments. Please ensure we have an up to date email address on your chart.  

Patients must arrive on time for their appointments and should aim to be at the office 5 minutes ahead of their appointment time to allow time to check in, remove shoes/put on a mask - if appropriate. Dr. Dobson and Dr. Stewart are committed to running on time and it is rare that they are behind. If a patient is more than 5 minutes late for an appointment (for example, for a 15 minute appointment, this is 1/3rd of the appointment time), it will be considered a missed appointment and need to be rescheduled. Sometimes, at the discretion of the physician, your appointment may still be accommodated if it does not affect the patient scheduled immediately after you. We strive to be fair and respect everyone's time as well as ensure we dedicate the time to adequately assess your medical concern (it is not fair to you or your physician to rush through something that was important enough to book an appointment in the first place). 

Third Party requests are not insured by OHIP and are therefore an "uninsured service". Fees for completing these requests are the responsibility of the patient or the third party. Examples include short/long-term disability applications, life insurance forms, personal injury lawyer requests, etc. 

Per the CPSO policy, your physician has either 45 or 60 days to complete the request (depending on the nature of the form/request)

All forms dropped off to the office in person or sent electronically using our Document Drop (pre-arranged by the office), must be reviewed by the patient beforehand to ensure the patient portion is complete with all demographic information and signatures.  Forms received without signed consent for release of information, or where the patient portion is incomplete, will not be accepted or completed. 

Prescription renewals without an appointment are not covered by OHIP. Please see uninsured services for more information. 

It is important that patients take an active role in managing their medications, working collaboratively with their primary care provider. 

Patients are asked to bring all medications to each appointment so the physician or nurse practitioner can ensure your medication list is up to date on your chart and put through any prescription renewals with repeats at the time of your appointment. 

For chronic medical conditions, your physician or NP, will provide you with sufficient supply to last you between appointments - at which time, it is medically necessary to have an appointment to reassess appropriateness of the medication and any associated monitoring (ie bloodwork) or physical exam assessments (ie blood pressure), in order to renew or change a medication. 

When patients are on their last repeat of a medication, that should serve as a prompt for the patient to schedule an appointment. The appointment should be scheduled for at least 2 weeks prior to running out of medication. 

Failure to book an appointment before running out of medications, will result in a fee to renew the medication without an appointment. An appointment will still be required before running out of the medication the next time to reassess the medication as outlined above. 

Prescription renewal requests for controlled substances, without an appointment, may be exempt from the usual fee - please speak with your physician for details. 

Some medications have higher risk of dependence and misuse and are referred to as controlled substances. For example, opioids (also called narcotics), stimulants for ADHD, benzodiazepines and some sleeping aids. 

All patients on these medications are required to complete a Controlled Substances Contract.

Controlled substances must be accurately monitored, if you are on these medications no other medical provider outside Hume Street Health should be prescribing these medications unless discussed with your physician. 

Please note that your prescription may need to change due to new guidelines and standard of care. 

The dispensing frequency for these medications is higher, meaning patients need to visit the pharmacy more frequently to pick up their medications as large quantities cannot be dispensed at once. 

Prescription renewal requests for controlled substances, without an appointment, are sometimes exempt from the usual fee - please speak with your physician for details. 

Failure to follow these policies and those in the Controlled Substances Contract may result in a warning or discontinuation of the physician-patient relationship.

If a physician or nurse practitioner has ordered a test for you (for example, bloodwork or imaging), he or she will be responsible for following up on the result. At the time the test is ordered, your physician or NP will advise you of what to expect for follow-up of the results. For example, you may be asked to schedule a follow-up appointment after you've had the test done or you may be advised "no news is good news", meaning you will only be contacted should there be an abnormality with your test that needs follow-up. Please pay attention to the instructions you've been given regarding results communication at the time the test was ordered.

We experience a high volume of phone calls each day. If you are waiting to hear back about a result, please be patient and give us time to reach out to you (if that is what was communicated to you when the test was ordered), rather than calling to inquire before the physician or NP has had a chance to review. 

For specialists who order tests, it is the specialists responsibility (not your family physician or NP's), to follow-up on the results. Please do not call the office to review bloodwork or imaging that your specialist has ordered for you. Although your family physician will be copied on the results, he/she did not order the test and is not responsible for following up on the results. 

For patient privacy and to be compliant with the Personal Health Information Protection Act (PHIPA), we do not use non-secure email at our office. For electronic communication from the office or your healthcare provider, we use a secure messaging service called Ocean that is directly linked with the patient's electronic medical record. This is one-way communication only and patients are not able to reply to messages or start a new message. Patients can, however, complete important health forms (for example developmental screening questions for well baby visits, mental health questionnaires) and the answers are securely sent to the patient's chart.

If patients have attachments that need to be sent to our office (for example, a work or disability form that needs to be completed by your physician), please call the office and instructions will be provided to use our Document Drop online. Do NOT use this without prior permission as it is not monitored regularly. If a document is received without prior permission from the office, it will be deleted and note processed.