How to be Prepared for the Next School Year

By: Adilene Guzman
HAPPI Health
Community Outreach Coordinator

As you enjoy the hot weather with your family, visiting the doctor’s office likely isn’t at the top of your list. However, the summer season is the perfect time to prepare for your child’s upcoming school year.
If your child plans to participate in sports, we suggest you call our office and schedule a well-check visit. During this appointment, our medical staff will check your child’s vision, height, weight, blood pressure, and joint reflexes and discuss current medications.

In addition to well-checks, HAPPI offers sports physicals for children. It’s crucial to have a sports physical so the doctor can determine if your child’s health could affect their athletic performance. For example, if your child has asthma, your doctor can prescribe medication to ease your child’s breathing and prevent asthma attacks during sports.

The summer can be a slow time for doctors’ offices as people are traveling or are not getting as sick as they do during the fall and winter seasons. This is why we recommend catching up on your appointments during the summer break, as it will be easier to get scheduled with shorter wait times. Another reason to come into the doctor’s office in the summer is to get your child up to date on vaccinations. Every school district requires all students to be up to date on vaccines to attend classes. We encourage you to take this time to plan ahead, as everyone rushes to set up last-minute appointments, and specific paperwork is required for babies and children to attend daycare or school. This can be stressful for patients and HAPPI staff as everyone tries to come in at the same time, and schedules fill in quickly.

HAPPI Urgent Care can take care of your child’s health needs for last-minute sports physicals. They won’t be able to provide vaccines or blue cards, but if your child needs a sports physical we can provide this service. A walk-in sports physical is a $35 charge. Insurance does not cover sports physicals reason, which is why we include this charge. Our Urgent Care also offers this service on Saturdays, we know plenty of our patients are working parents and Saturdays may be more convenient.

If your child currently has had a well-check visit, a sports physical form can be filled out with a $10 charge. We also can provide our patients with additional blue cards for a $5 charge. Our staff is always busy attending to patients, so our nurses fill out all paperwork during their spare time or after clinic. Please be patient with our staff all form requests have a 24 hour period to be completed.

We recommend that you call our offices today and check to see whether your child needs to get updated vaccines or if they are due for a well visit. We also hope everyone has a beautiful and HAPPI summer. Stay active and safe, and know HAPPI Health is always here to assist you.

Source: Nemours Kids Health