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During Office Hours:
Office staff is available to answer your calls from 9 AM to 12 noon and 2 PM to 5 PM, Monday through Friday. The hours from 9 to 10 each morning and 2 to 3 each afternoon are the busiest phone call hours, so it may be best to call at other times during the day for non-urgent needs.
Staffing constraints prevent us from being able to answer your routine calls during the lunch hour.
When the Office is Closed or at Noon
At any time during the day your doctor, or a covering doctor, is available to respond to any urgent need. Simply call the office and follow the recorded instructions. For such non-urgent needs as prescription refills and appointments, we ask that you call during those hours when staff is available to assist you.
Medication Refills:
Requests for prescription refills are one of the most common requests received by our office. To help us meet your refill needs we have established the following policies:
Whenever possible, please call your Pharmacy with your refill request and have them call our Pharmacy Refill line 714-378-4951 with your request.
Please call a minimum of 2 working days in advance of your need. This allows us to provide the doctor with your chart, and allows the doctor to give priority to patients in the office or those with urgent needs. Please understand that good medical care prevents us from refilling routine medications on weekends or after hours, especially potentially addictive medications.
Emergencies:
We have made a commitment to quickly respond to all urgent calls from patients. To meet the urgent needs of our patients a doctor is in the office from 8:30 AM until 5 PM on most days. We are capable of handling almost all of your urgent needs in our office, and for this reason do not refer to urgent care centers during office hours.
If you have an urgent need after hours, call the office and follow the recorded instructions. A doctor will be paged and respond to your call. The doctor will ask appropriate questions and give advice based upon the circumstances. This advice may include:
-Scheduling an appointment for the next day
-Prescribing medication over the phone
-Giving advice over the phone
-Referral to an Urgent Care facility
-Referral to an Emergency Room (usually Hoag Hospital)
It is extremely important for our HMO patients that a call is made prior to seeking care at an Emergency Room or Urgent Care facility. Failure to call for advice may result in the patient being responsible for all charges associated with the visit.
E-mail:
Established patients may reach us via e-mail for non-urgent questions. Please check our office E-Mail Policy page for details.