About this Office:

Our Clinicians:

Dr. Millsaps and other Clinicians:
Dr. David M. Millsaps has continuously practiced primary care pediatrics in the Unifour area for the past 29 years and maintains full admitting privileges at both Catawba Valley Medical Center and Frye Regional Medical Center. This new pediatric office is designed to provide personal, comprehensive services, to allow for more innovative approaches toward patient care, and to allow more time for detailed coordinated management in complex clinical cases. In addition to Dr. Millsaps, we have now added seven more clinicians, carefully selected, all of whom share the common vision. Dr. Lynn B. Spees joined us in 2007, and Dr. Brooke Lawrence Hata joined us in January 2009. All are either board certified pediatricians or board certified pediatric nurse practitioners. This represents over 90 years of combined clinical experience in pediatrics. A licensed Dietitian/nutritionist, Elizabeth Sheeks LDN, joined the staff in January 2009. She primarily sees medically fragile infants and toddlers. An additional dietitian will join us in March 2009, to manage our overweight, healthy lifestyles, and metabolic syndrome program. We will soon be adding additional psychology support within the office. We encourage you to read our Guiding Principles to gain an insight into the importance we place on excellence in service, patient education, and continuity of medical care.  Click here to view details about our clinicians.

Office Care:

Services: We provide comprehensive pediatric care, serving the health care needs of patients from infants up through age 21. The office provides quality sick, injured, and preventative healthcare in a coordinated fashion with pediatric specialty nurses, appropriate equipment and laboratory facilities, and a friendly, knowledgeable office staff. Most of our minor surgical procedures (simple laceration repairs, circumcisions, etc.) are performed in our office treatment room. We also provide counseling services and/or coordinate with specialists in the counseling fields. 95% of our patient's health care can typically be efficiently and cost-effectively delivered within the office without having to travel elsewhere. Fortunately, the close proximity of Catawba Valley Medical Center (CVMC) makes even out-of-office services convenient. Imaging, X-rays, CTs, MRIs, advanced lab backup, emergency room service, and other procedures are available directly across the street. A drug store, medical equipment supplier, bus stop, and the Public Health Department as well as offices for DSS, Medicaid/AccessCare, Health Choice, and WIC are all within walking distance.

Coordination with other specialists, patient education, and technology: We have excellent working relationships with specialists here in the Unifour area as well as distant sub-specialists at Wake Forest University - Baptist Medical Center (Winston-Salem), Carolinas Medical Center (Charlotte), Duke Medical Center (Durham), UNC Medical Center (Chapel Hill), and others. To provide better documentation and coordinated care, we we will be moving from "paper" to "electronic" medical records (EMR). This EMR will provide significant quality improvements and services, including a "Patient Web Portal". Recognizing the importance of technology in improving patient care, we have enhanced the practice web-site to provide an a generous amount of educational resources to better serve our patients. We have put particular emphasis on Internet-linked patient education. Patient education within the office has advanced in a similar fashion in order to provide more accurate and helpful information for our patents. We hope that our overall efforts will be appreciated and invite you to help us continually improve on our service to you and your children.

Regular Office Hours:  Regular office hours are from 8-5 Monday through Friday. We suggest that you call as soon after 8AM as possible to improve your ability to have an appointment at your preferred time with a clinician of your choice. To be seen that same day in the office, you will need to call no later than 4PM. We make appointments for well children and those with non-urgent problems during regular office hours. We do have additional hours where we will open the office on weekend and holiday mornings at 8AM-10AM (only in we have patients who need to be seen for urgent care problems and not for well child checks and minor problems).

Separate "Sick" and Well" Areas of the Office:  We have always had separate "Sick" and "Well" waiting rooms and exam rooms in the upper level of Unifour Pediatrics. On this upper level, we have set aside areas for well children which are away from children with infectious diseases. We have now gone one step further by having a completely separate level of the office for well newborns, infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. As of July 1, 2008, we have opened the lower level of Unifour Pediatrics for: (a) well children less than five years age and (b) for those who are immuno-compromised (have problems with their ability to fight infectious disease). In this new office, we have independent "well child" parking, waiting rooms, business office, exam rooms and clinical staff. Other sick siblings with the well child will not be permitted in this office (in this case the family will be directed to be seen on the upper level). Those that are "under-immunized" (those who are behind on the STANDARD immunization schedules published by the American Academy of Pediatrics, VYB, CDC, NAPNAP, AAFP, etc.) must also be seen on the upper level and NOT in this "Well Clinic", as these also represent a risk to our well and immuno-compromised children seen in the "Well Clinic". We may, in the future extend this "well office" to five year old children as well. Older "well children" will continue to be seen in the upper office, using that office's well waiting rooms and well exam rooms, separate from the sick areas.

After Hours Care Telephone Calls, Urgent Care, and Emergency Room:  Yes, we have extensive office hours at Unifour Pediatrics, but as you know, sometimes children become sick are are injured outside those hours. After-hours telephone calls (828-328-1118) are be handled by Dr. Millsaps, Dr. Spees, or by one of our board certified pediatric nurse practitioners (Sommer, Angela, Melissa, or Amy). Our answering service will take the call, they will find us on our cell phone or pager, and we will then call you back. We will ask you relevant questions and carefully listening to you, and will in most cases be able to provide you the needed child-specific advice over the phone. Alternatively, we may direct you to bring the child in to the office the following morning or, if your child's condition warrants immediate care, direct you to an urgent care center or ER . If there is a question about a specific case, we may discuss the case with other clinicians, and call you back.

We recommend that you print out two copies of this PDF document Helpful Information on Telephone Calls and Office Visits, which details how to contact us and interact most effectively with our staff. Alternatively, we can also supply you with these documents if you want to stop by the office. We suggest that you keep one copy at you bedside table, and one copy on the refrigerator door, attached with a refrigerator magnet. Most families have found this information to be very helpful, and saved lots of wasted time and frustration.

We also recommend that if you are near a computer, go to this web-site and (on the top light-blue menu), click the "SICK Care" or "Injured Care" menu items which will direct your to time specific contact information, and will also provide you helpful pediatric information. These dynamic web-pages are programmed provide you very specific information how to deal with our office at that particular time, day of week, holidays, etc.

Weekends: We will try to be available for you (on an "as needed" basis) on weekends and most holidays (usually available for urgent problems at least part of the day, 364 days/year). Call at 8AM (up to 9:30AM) on weekend and holidays, if you need to be seen for an urgent problem that same day. If you call later in the day, the office will no longer be available, our clinical and laboratory staff will have left, machine will have been shut down, and we will not be able to see you in the office setting. As previously stated,  weekend office hours are only in we have patients who need to be seen for urgent care problems and not for well child checks or minor problems. Again we recommend that you print out this PDF document Helpful Information on Telephone Calls and Office Visits, which details how to contact us and interact most effectively with our staff. We also recommend that if you are near a computer, go to this web-site and (on the top light-blue menu), click the "SICK Care" or "Injured Care" menu items which will direct your to time specific contact information, and will also provide you helpful pediatric information.

Book Resources ("Bibles of Child Care"): We strongly urge you to purchase and carefully read the Academy of Pediatrics' core parent education book(s), "Caring for your Infant and Young Child, Ages Birth through Age 5", "Caring for your School-Age Child, Ages 5-12 ", and "Caring for your Adolescent and Young Adult, Ages 12-21" (purchase the paperback book(s) appropriate for your child's age). Other excellent reference books include Guide to Your Child's Symptoms and Baby & Child Health. These are superb books which will provide you a tremendous advantage in caring for your children, help prevent or quickly treat many problems, and probably save you many office, urgent care, and ER visits. Saving a single visit for even one of your children will usually more that pay for the cost of the book, and many mothers tell us that this and other materials that we provide them saved them 6-8 office visits during the first year of life. You can usually buy them for $18-20 retail at bookstores or purchase them at our office for slightly less than our cost (if we have them in stock). Many other educational handouts will also be provided to you during office visits. This is key to helping your children stay in good health.

Internet Resources (This web site and Links from this web site):
We urge you to explore this web site (UnifourPeds.com) and to frequently use it as a "child health advisor" as we add additional educational content and links. Thousand of pediatric topics are now available with just a few mouse-clicks. Especially refer to the "Healthcare Advice" selection. Click here to see some of these links. Patient/family education links are wide dispersed around the website, with the more important ones "bolded". Of particular interest, are excellent parenting lectures (over 500 of them) from experts in the country... you can click on this section and listen to them directly on you computer (archived RealAudio format). Please send us other links and suggestions so that we can continually improve this valuable resource and please report any links that do not work. Note that we have provided an extensive search engine within the site that will enable you to easily find phone numbers, providers, addresses, maps, and driving directions for specialists, NC pediatricians, pharmacies, government agencies, support groups, hospitals, etc. and much more. (this will be temporarily non-functioning while the Internet web hosting site is being moved and the database is being reconnected and configured).

ER and Hospitalized Care:

Local Care (ER and in-hospital care at Frye and Catawba hospitals): When our patients need to be seen in the emergency room, we are fortunate to have excellent ER physicians at both hospitals (at Frye and Catawba) who provide excellent care. If the need arises for a pediatric consultation, we have made arrangements with our pediatric hospitalists, Dr. David Berry and Dr. Sam Wellman (Neonatology and Pediatric Acute Care Specialists, Inc), to attend to these consults. Dr. Millsaps, Dr. Spees, and our other clinicians have been very pleased with the care they provide. Written reports are subsequently delivered to our office. If there is the need for subsequent hospitalization, Dr. Berry and Dr. Wellman will continue the care in the pediatric ward. When patients seen in the office require hospital admission, we directly admit to their service, allowing bedside care to be provided in a much more timely fashion by highly skilled pediatric hospital specialists. Again, both hospitals, Frye and Catawba, have excellent pediatric units with appropriate pediatric specialty nurses and equipment. Drs. Wellman and Berry will coordinate with other specialists as needed (such as with surgeons, anesthesiologists, asthma specialists, etc.).

Distant Care: Should it be necessary to transfer to a tertiary care unit (like Baptist, Charlotte, Duke, etc), Neonatology and Pediatric Acute Care Specialists, Inc will also coordinate the transfer process. Both Dr. Wellman and Dr. Berry have extensive experience in acute/intensive care of pediatric patients and with pediatric transfer. The hospital care of our pediatric patients is covered nicely!

Nursery Care: Dr. Millsaps and Dr. Spees provide care for newborns in the full-term nursery (at both Frye and Catawba), usually seeing these infants on morning or evening rounds depending on when your child is born. After reviewing the charts, examining the newborns, and writing orders, he will be visiting new mothers in their postpartum rooms. Questions will be answered, instructions given, and follow-up visits will be arranged. If it is desired and appropriate, Dr. Millsaps or Dr. Spees will perform a circumcision. On rare days or weekends when Dr. Millsaps and Dr. Spees are both out of town (example for a NC Pediatric Society meeting), Dr. Wellman and Dr. Berry will provide nursery care, and circumcisions will either be performed by others or Dr. Millsaps or Dr. Millsaps will do this later in his office. Newborns will usually be seen back in the Unifour Pediatric office1-2 days after discharge from the hospital, or earlier if jaundice develops.

NICU ("nursery special care unit" or "nursery intensive care unit"):
Should it be necessary to transfer your child to the NICU, then their care will be transferred to the service of Neonatology and Pediatric Acute Care Specialists, Inc (board certified neonatologists Dr. David Berry and Dr. Sam Wellman). They provide excellent care.

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