Preparing for Your Appointment at the Rodebaugh Diabetes Center
At the Rodebaugh Diabetes Center, our first goal is to determine the treatment option that’s best for your specific type of diabetes so that we can personalize your care.
To make a diabetes appointment at Penn Medicine, please call 800-789-7366 (PENN). Patients may also request an appointment online.
Requirements For Scheduling as a New Patient
If you are a new patient of the Rodebaugh Diabetes Center, you must have the following:
- A referral from your primary care provider
- A list of current medications
- An A1c test and other lab results that were taken within the past three months.
At your first visit, we will assess the status of your diabetes, devise a plan to optimize your care, and determine if you require follow-up visits.
In general, you’ll have ongoing care if you have Type 1 diabetes, or if you have Type 2 diabetes and require complex insulin therapy.
If the purpose of your visit is a second opinion of your current diabetes treatment plan, we may devise a plan and contact your primary care provider who will implement our recommendations.
If you have diabetes and recently received a transplant, you’ll visit the Rodebaugh Diabetes Center for six to 12 months, and then may be referred back to your primary care provider.
Preparation For Office Visits
To ensure your visit is as beneficial as possible, please review the following:
- Please bring your glucose meter to every appointment. Your blood sugar readings are important data for you and your provider to review at the visit, and without them, it is difficult for us to prescribe medication changes. Our ability to review your blood sugars carefully is one of the primary benefits of seeing a diabetes specialist.
- If you have an insulin pump or a continuous glucose monitor, please upload your data the day before your appointment.
- Please arrive 15 minutes before your appointment time. If you are more than 15 minutes late, you may need to reschedule your appointment.
- Your pharmacy will not contact us when you have run out of medications. Please ask for refills at the time of your appointment or two weeks before you run out of medications from your last refill.
- Our nurse practitioners are highly skilled clinicians and they are part of our treatment team. You can expect that you will be scheduled with them.
What to Expect as a Rodebaugh Patient
During the day our doctors and nurse practitioners are seeing patients in our clinic or in the hospital, so our nurses will respond to your messages and phone calls.
When you call our practice, our Practice Call Center representatives take the calls. Please leave as much detailed information as possible and a diabetes practice nurse will call you back.
We prioritize all of our phone calls based on urgency. We will respond to urgent calls within a few hours up to one business day, while non-urgent calls may take longer to get a response. About 5,000 patients receive diabetes care from our center, so if you have a deadline for a call back, please call us several days in advance of your deadline.
Examples of non-urgent calls
- You are travelling to another country and need a travel letter. Please call one to two weeks in advance of departure.
- You are having a colonoscopy and wonder if you need to change your medications. Call one week before your colonoscopy.
Examples of urgent calls
- Your blood sugars are > 250 over one to two days or you are concerned you have diabetic ketoacidosis.
- You are experiencing problems with low blood sugars.
If your call is related to high, low or fluctuating blood sugars, please have your blood sugar readings for the past four days available during your call. Also include a list of your current medications.
If you are experiencing a true medical emergency, you should seek emergency care immediately.
We have a physician on call after 5 p.m., but calls should be reserved only for emergencies, not for prescription refills.
MyChart by myPennMedicine for Diabetes Care
The MyChart by myPennMedicine patient portal allows you to access your lab results, request medication refills, communicate with your care team and send blood sugar logs.
Do not USE MyChart by myPennMedicine for urgent matters. It may be several days before a nurse reviews your message. For urgent matters related to your care at the Rodebaugh Diabetes Center, please call the office at 215-662-2468.
Rodebaugh Diabetes Center Forms Policy
We charge $15 to fill out FMLA, short-term disability, special needs and other health forms. You must pick up completed forms at our office.
Please note, that you should allow 5 business days for the office to complete forms.