Duke General Internal Medicine Frequently Asked Questions

What are normal Duke General Internal Medicine (DGIM) clinic operating hours?

The Duke Health Centers at Pickett Road and at Southpoint open at 7:30 a.m., Monday through Friday, allowing for early check-in for scheduled appointments and for early laboratory studies. The clinics close at 5 p.m.

The physicians of Duke General Internal Medicine are available at either the Duke Health Center at Pickett Road or the Duke Health Center at Southpoint from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. There are no DGIM clinic hours on Saturday or Sunday. Individual physician clinic schedules vary.

How can I make an appointment with my DGIM physician?

To schedule an appointment with your physician at Duke Health Center at Pickett Road, call 919-490-9800 between the hours of 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.

To schedule an appointment with your physician at Duke Health Center at Southpoint,
Call 919-572-9905 between the hours of 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.

Please arrive at least 15 minutes prior to your scheduled office visit.

When is the best time to call the DGIM clinics?

Our analysis shows that peak call times for our scheduling lines and our nurse triage lines are from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m., with Monday morning being particularly busy. For optimal service, please consider calling at a time outside of the peak periods for non-urgent scheduling or nursing triage requests.

What is required prior to my DGIM office visit?

When you visit a DGIM clinic, you will be required to check-in. During the check-in process, your will be asked to verify your address, contact phone numbers and insurance status. You may also be asked to fill out forms for billing purposes, and have the option to provide your e-mail address.

For patients with Medicare, additional forms will need to be completed online by the receptionist, so you will need to be prepared and have additional time prior to your scheduled appointment to answer additional questions. Please arrive at least 15 minutes prior to your scheduled appointment time.

You will also be asked to provide your co-payment and any required deductible as well as paying any previous balance on your account prior to your visit. The DGIM clinics accept cash, check, or debit/credit cards for payment.

Please bring all prescription and non-prescription medications with you to your office visit so that your health care team can accurately record the medications that you are taking, and to review your medications with you.

How can I speak with a DGIM triage nurse about an acute medical issue?

If you are a patient of DGIM at the Duke Health Center at Pickett Road, triage nurses are available from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 919-490-9800.

If you are a patient of DGIM at the Duke Health Center at Southpoint, triage nurses are available from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 919-572-9905.

Peak triage nursing call volume is from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. Please avoid calling during these times for non-urgent requests.

Emergent patient calls received between 4 and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, will be sorted to the appropriate service by the DGIM call center.

Please visit the Duke General Internal Medicine web page at www.dukehealth.org for our most common triage nursing protocols for acute medical problems to help you decide if you need to speak directly with one of our triage nurses.

How can I leave a message for my DGIM physician?

If you are a DGIM patient at the Duke Health Center at Pickett Road, please call 919-490-9800.

If you are a DGIM patient at the Duke Health Center at Southpoint, please call 919-572-9905.

Your physician will review all messages within 24 hours. If your physician is out of the clinic for that particular day, a covering DGIM physician within the practice will review your message.

Since your physician is often busy seeing scheduled patients for that day, your physician may ask that another member of the health care team contact you for additional information or to provide medical advice. Your physician also may request that you schedule an appointment in person to discuss your question in further detail.

Please do not call back within 24 hours of your initial message request to check on the status of that message; this will only delay the response time of your previous message, as that message is removed from the queue system to record your “new” message.

Can I use e-mail to communicate with my DGIM physician?

Currently, our routine e-mail system is not secure for patient communications, and therefore communication via e-mail with your physician is not encouraged. DGIM is evaluating systems that will allow for efficient and secure e-mail communication between our physicians and patients.

How will I learn about the results of tests that my DGIM physician has ordered for me?

Your physician may order additional tests as part of your visit, as a follow-up to previous studies, or may ask you to schedule an appointment for tests to be done at the lab at Duke Health Center at Pickett Road and Southpoint, or at other facilities within the Duke University Medical Center.

The DGIM physicians are committed to patients receiving their results for all lab tests, clinical studies, or x-rays after they are completed. Our current process is to send a letter via mail to our patients outlining their study results.

Most common lab or x-ray studies are available for review by your physician within three business days. After your physician has reviewed the lab results, he or she will create a letter for you discussing the results. This lab letter will be created within five business days of your test. Once the lab letter is created, it is sent to the clerical team for processing and mailing.

Please allow two weeks after your lab or x-ray test to receive the results in the mail. Calling into the office to request your lab results over the phone is discouraged, as the letter has likely already in the mail to you.

If your physician notes any significant abnormality on your test results, a member of the clinical health care team (your physician, nurse, clinical pharmacist) may contact you by phone to discuss the results and describe any additional tests that need to be ordered.

If you do not receive your results by mail within two weeks, please contact the DGIM clerical team at Pickett Road at 919-419-5941 or 919-419-5944 or the DGIM clerical team at Southpoint at 919-572-6052 or 919-572-6068.

It is not the policy of DGIM to send copies of the actual laboratory or x-ray results to patients.

If you would like a paper copy of your actual lab results, please contact DGIM medical records.

What if I am unable to keep my scheduled DGIM appointment?

If you need to cancel or reschedule an existing appointment for any reason, it is very important that you call our appointment schedulers at 919-490-9800 for DGIM appointments scheduled at DHC at Pickett Road, or 919-572-9905 for DGIM appointments scheduled at DHC at Southpoint at least 24 hours in advance.

If a scheduled appointment is not cancelled, your physician will send you a letter stressing the importance of cancelling an appointment. If you receive three of these letters from you physician, you will be discharged from our practice and be asked to see another physician outside of Duke General Internal Medicine.

What if I have an urgent medical question after DGIM clinic operating hours or on the weekend?

A physician representing Duke General Internal Medicine is on-call after normal clinic operating hours to address any urgent medical issues.

To contact our after hours answering service (available after 5 p.m. each evening, and the entire weekend) please call our office numbers at 919-490-9800 or 919-572-9905.

The answering service will then contact the DGIM on-call physician, who will then contact you.

For more urgent medical issues, Duke Urgent Care or Duke Emergency Care are available.

What if I need my prescription medications refilled?

DGIM policy requests that you first contact your pharmacy to have an existing prescription refilled. The pharmacy will then contact the DGIM offices with all prescription refill requests.

We are unable to refill prescription medications if you have not been seen by your DGIM physician within the last year, and you will be asked to schedule an appointment with your DGIM physician.

Please try to have prescription refill requests made between Monday and Thursday. Requests received on these dates will be completed within one business day. Prescription refill requests received on Friday after 12 noon will be processed the following Monday.

For requests of written prescriptions to mail to your pharmacy benefits program, please leave a message on the prescription refill line by calling DGIM at Pickett Road at 919-490-9800 or DGIM at Southpoint at 919-572-9905.

In a clear, slow voice, please leave your:

Name
Duke medical record number
Date of birth
Name(s) of medications
Dosages of medications
Quantity of medications needed (# of pills/month, # of refills needed for the year)

Also say if you would like prescriptions mailed to you or to have available for pick-up at either Duke Health Center at Pickett Road or Southpoint.

DGIM is unable to fax any prescription requests to pharmacy benefit management (PBM’s) companies such as Medco without you first completing all the patient information on the form, including your patient customer number.

How can I request a copy of my medical records?

For patients that would like copies of their medical record, you will need to sign Medical Records Release form. You must sign this form, and fax or mail back to either:

Duke Health Center at Pickett Road
DGIM Medical Records
3024 Pickett Road, Durham, NC 27705
Fax: 919-419-8564

Duke Health Center at Southpoint
DGIM Medical Records
6301 Herndon Road
Durham, NC 27713
Fax: 919-572-6000

Please allow seven to 14 days for copies to be made.

There is also a charge of 75 cents per page for one to 25 pages and 50 cents per page for 26 or more pages.

What happens if I need to be admitted to the hospital?

For patients who require acute hospital admission, you and your DGIM physician can choose which hospital (Duke University Hospital or Durham Regional Hospital) would be most appropriate for your care. Most DGIM physicians do not make hospital rounds.

During your hospitalization, you will be cared for by a team of physicians who focus just on hospital medicine, and are known as hospitalists. The hospitalists and your DGIM physician will remain in contact during your hospital stay, and your DGIM physician will be notified when you are admitted and discharged, so that proper follow-up care between you and your DGIM physician can be arranged.

What if I need a letter from my physician for insurance purposes, work excuse, disability, etc?

Each letter requires a different amount of effort to create for you by your DGIM physician and the clerical team. Requests for work excuses (if seen in the clinic that day), NC DOT handicapped parking sticker applications, and requests to be excused from jury duty are created for patients based on individual requests, and usual turnaround time is three business days.

For letter requests that required review of your medical chart and/or more extensive documentation, you may be asked by your physician to make an appointment to review in person. Also, you may be required to sign a release of medical records and have your chart copied, noting that additional charges may apply.

Requests that require your physician to generate and write a unique letter or create a unique form on your behalf based on your request may be subject to an additional charge.

Why is a health care student or resident physician seeing me at the clinic?

Duke University Medical Center is well known for excellence in medical education. Since all physicians within the Division of General Internal Medicine are faculty members of the Duke University School of Medicine, we are committed to professional development and teaching of all physicians and health care providers.

Therefore, during your office visit in our clinics, you may be seen by a nursing, pharmacy, or physician assistant student, a Duke medical student, or a resident physician.

You as a patient always have the opportunity to choose not to have the health care student participate in your office visit.

For appointments that are scheduled with our team of medical doctors known as practice partnerships (Graduate Medical Education, resident physicians) you will first be seen by that physician, and then by the faculty physician if necessary.

What services are available to me if English is not my preferred language?

At check-in, you will be asked for your language preference. Duke University Medical Center has interpreters available to help you communicate with your DGIM physician in your preferred language, and they can be contacted to assist you during your office visit.

Duke General Internal Medicine Frequently Asked Questions

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