Vaccine Information - Washington Pediatric Associates - Washington, DC Pediatrician, Washington Pediatric Associates PC

Immunization Policy

What is the Change? As of July 1, 2014, Washington Pediatric Associates, PC ("WPA") will no longer maintain an inventory of vaccines for patients. However, we will absolutely continue to administer vaccines to our patients. To do this, prior to coming to our office for vaccine shots, our patient parents will first be required to obtain vaccines from our pharmacy partner, Tschiffely Pharmacy, conveniently located in the lobby of our building.

Why make the Change? Our decision to adopt this new policy was a difficult one for us, as well as other smaller practices nation-wide following suit. Historically, WPA has maintain a full inventory of vaccines to accommodate our 8,000 patient practice. However, in the past two years, smaller pediatric practices (such as ours) have been financial impacted in three areas:

Increased Costs. Vaccines prices have steeply gone up, and with a sizable patient population, WPA has to make very large upfront expenditures of capital for vaccines;

Partial Reimbursement. While WPA pays full price for each vaccine, insurance companies will only partially reimburse WPA for its vaccine purchase.

Delayed Reimbursement. Lastly, insurance companies will substantially delay reimbursing pediatric offices, like WPA, for very long periods of time.

The net effect is that WPA is spending very high amounts of money for vaccines, only to be partially reimbursed by insurance companies with payments coming many months down the line. All of these factors are beginning to cause pediatric offices nationwide to reevaluate the need to purchase large inventories of vaccines, and in some cases, many offices are simply outsourcing altogether vaccine administration. Fortunately, we have found a happy medium which permits patients to easily obtain their vaccines in route to our office (literally, in the lobby of our building)-and then conveniently bring them to our office for vaccine administration.

How will this impact your Child? Generally speaking, this new vaccine policy change will not impact your child's health and ability to get vaccine shots from WPA. The only change is that in route to our office, you will now need to obtain vaccines from Tschiffely Pharmacy first, and then bring it to our office. This may require an additional 5 minutes of your time prior to your visit.

Any Questions? We hope you better understand why we have had to implement this change. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact Dr. Lang.

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