Booking an Appointment for Someone Else: How the Welcome Call Works

If you're booking a visit for someone else, a partner, an adult child, a teenager, a parent, and this is their first visit with us, there's one extra step before we can put you on the schedule: a short welcome call with our coordinator, on the phone, with both of you on the line.

If they're already an established patient, you don't need the welcome call, but there's still one thing you have to get right. That's further down.

We call it the welcome call, and it's run by our coordinator. It takes a few minutes, it isn't an interrogation, and it exists to get one thing right from the start.

First, the thing people get wrong

The welcome call isn't your appointment with the provider, and it isn't a video visit.

It's a phone call. Not telehealth, and not a visit with a clinician. Nobody is examined on it, and nothing is diagnosed, prescribed, or treated.

What it actually is: an instructional call. Our coordinator walks the two of you through how the charts work, what's coming, and what each of you needs to do. That's the entire job.

We put this at the top because it's far and away the most common misunderstanding, and people arrive expecting their actual visit.

If you're ever unsure which one is on the calendar, here's the tell: a real visit can't happen until consent forms are signed and we have insurance information on file. If nobody has signed anything yet and we don't have an insurance card, then what's scheduled isn't the visit. The welcome call is the step that puts those pieces in place so the real appointment can go ahead.

What the call is for

To get the chart structure and the consents right before anyone sits in a room.

Don't worry about whose email or phone you use to book the call itself. People overthink this part. Book it, get both of you on the line, and we sort the details out together.

What comes out of the call is two separate charts: one for the patient, one for you.

That structure is the whole point. The patient's chart is where their care and their consent forms live, because a patient consents to their own care and nobody can sign that for them, however close they're and however good their intentions. Your chart is how you stay in the loop.

On the call, our staff will:

• Take contact details for both of you and set up both charts
• Explain what forms are coming, when they arrive, and how to complete them
• Make clear that the forms have to be done before the care visit
• Answer whatever either of you wants to ask

Nothing is sent to you beforehand, and there's no paperwork attached to the welcome call itself. The consent forms come afterward, once the charts exist.

We spend real time walking through those instructions, and not because we assume anyone is careless. For a lot of patients, especially younger ones, this is the first time they have signed their own medical paperwork instead of watching a parent handle it. A few minutes on a call is a much better introduction to that than a link landing cold in an inbox.

In practice the call delivers two instructions, one to each of you.

To whoever is booking: the forms aren't yours to fill in. We know that runs against the instinct. If you're a parent, you have filled out this kid's paperwork their entire life, and doing it now feels like helping. This is the one place where it creates a problem instead, because the signature has to actually be theirs.

To the patient: this part is genuinely yours, and nobody else can do it for you. If it doesn't get done, the appointment doesn't happen. That isn't us being strict about admin. It's what consent means.

Neither of those is a telling-off. Most families have just never been asked to split it up before, and it's much easier to hear on a call than to work out from an email.

You do not get cut out of the loop

This is what people worry about, so let's be direct: having a separate chart doesn't mean you stop hearing anything.

Your chart is how you receive appointment notifications, reminders, and billing information. If you're the one handling logistics or paying the bill, you can carry on doing exactly that.

What sits on the patient's side is their own care and their own consent forms. Everything else can be shared, with their agreement. And for an under-18 hormone therapy visit, the parent consent form is sent to your chart, which is part of why we set it up properly on the call.

What happens if the forms do not get completed

We'll tell you both plainly on the call: if the consent forms aren't completed, the appointment is canceled.

We say it up front, in plain language, so that nobody is surprised later. It isn't a penalty and it isn't us being difficult. We can't provide care to someone who has not consented to it, so an appointment without signed forms isn't an appointment we can keep.

If the forms are sitting unsigned, the most useful thing you can do is ask the patient directly whether they want the visit. Sometimes the answer is yes and they just need a reminder. Sometimes the answer is that they aren't ready, and that's worth knowing before anyone takes time off work.

Why we started doing this

Honestly? Because we were getting patients who didn't know an appointment had been booked for them.

That's a bad way for care to start. Someone arriving at a visit they didn't agree to isn't going to be open with their clinician, isn't going to ask the questions they actually have, and isn't going to come back. It puts our staff in the position of delivering news the patient should have heard from the person who loves them.

The welcome call fixes this at the front end. By the time the visit happens, the patient knows about it and has agreed to it, with the forms signed to say so. That's a far better starting point for everyone, including the person who booked it.

We would rather have a slightly awkward five minute call now than a visit that goes badly later.

If you are booking for someone under 18

The same call applies, and it's worth reading our page on gynecology care for minors in Maryland alongside this one, because there's something there that surprises most parents.

Under Maryland law, a minor consents to their own contraception, STI testing and treatment, pregnancy-related care, and HIV prevention. That isn't our policy, it's the state statute. So for most of what we do, your teenager is the one who signs, the same as any other patient.

Hormone therapy is the exception. We provide it starting at age 16, and for anyone under 18 it does require a parent or guardian's consent.

Worth being precise about how that works, because it isn't an either/or. The patient still fills out their own forms. The parent consent is an additional form, sent separately to the parent through their contact chart. So for an under-18 HRT visit there are two sets of paperwork, and the visit needs both. The welcome call happens exactly the same way.

That's another reason we set the contact chart up properly on the call. It isn't only how you receive reminders and bills, it's also how a parent consent form actually reaches you.

Either way, a patient under 18 has to establish care in person at our Kensington office. After that first visit, telehealth follow-ups are available from wherever they are.

If they are already a patient

The welcome call is for new patients, because it's what sets up the charts and starts the consent process. Once someone is established with us, that work is already done and you can book a return visit for them without a call.

Here's where contact details do matter, in a way they didn't for the welcome call: book the follow-up under the patient's own email and phone, not yours.

Their email and phone number are how the system finds their existing chart. If you enter your own details instead, the booking doesn't attach to their record, and it won't work. So use their email and their phone, even though you're the one sitting there making the appointment.

What to have ready

Less than people assume. There are no forms to complete for this call.

• Both of you free at the same time. This is the one that actually matters.
• The patient's insurance card, if they're using insurance.

The patient will need an email address they actually check, since that's where their consent forms go, and it does need to be theirs, not a shared or parent account. If they don't have one, say so on the call. It's easily sorted and not a reason to delay booking.

How to book

Start a booking as you normally would. When the scheduler asks who the visit is for and you indicate it's for someone else who is new to us, it'll route you to the welcome call instead of straight to a time slot.

Start a booking, or get in touch if you would rather ask a question first.