General Practitioners

• Medical Weight Loss
  Weight control: Maintain a healthy weight to decrease how hard your heart has to work. If you are overweight (weighing more than your caregiver suggest), ask your caregiver about a weight loss plan. If you have sleep apnea, losing weight may help you breathe better during sleep.
• Primary Care
  Please be advised If your insurance requires a co-pay and/or a referral to see a specialist you must have them present at time of your visit. Referrals should be obtained from your Primary Care Physician before you can be seen. Appointments will be rescheduled if required referrals or co-pays are not available at the time of your visit.
• Smoking Cessation
• High Cholesterol
• Emergency Care
  Remember, although this monitor is continuously watching your heart rhythm, the monitor does not instantly notify the doctor’s office if there are abnormalities. There are many steps in transmitting rhythm information from your monitor to Hamilton Cardiology. This includes your physical distance to your transmitter, local cellular signal availability and quality, and availability of remote monitoring company technicians to receive and process the information that they will then notify our office. If one step is not working well there may be a delay in the office receiving information. There are designated criteria that our office or BioTel might contact you for during the business day and on nights and weekends. You might be called about these issues, so you need to ensure your contact information is up to date. Please note you will not be called with every abnormality, especially if not life threatening, as you will review the final monitoring report with your cardiologist at your follow up testing visit. It is recommended to take action should symptoms or a change in your medical condition occur while you are wearing the monitor. This includes calling the office to notify of such changes or go to the emergency room if severe or life-threatening symptoms occur.
• Flu Shots
• Electrocardiogram
  Avoid the use of oils, body lotions, moisturizing soaps or body washes for 3 days prior to testing. These products may affect the quality of your EKG tracings. Examples of these are “Oil of Olay” “Dove” “Ivory” “Caress” or “Aveeno”.
• Pneumonia
• Immunizations
  Vaccines: Ask your caregiver if you should get vaccinated against the flu or pneumonia. The best time to get a flu shot is in October or November. Flu shots are good for one year. Pneumonia shots are good for five to six years. Ask your caregiver which vaccinations are right for you.

Internists

• Kidney Stones
  Extracorporeal shock-wave lithotripsy (ESWL) is a noninvasive treatment that uses hydraulic shocks to dissolve kidney stones. This procedure is safe for most pacemaker patients, with some reprogramming of the pacing. You’ll need careful follow-up after the procedure and for several months to be sure your unit is working properly. Patients with certain kinds of pacemakers implanted in the abdomen should avoid ESWL. Discuss your specific case with your doctor before and after the treatment.
• Endoscopy
  Transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) is a procedure (similar to an Endoscopy) that uses a special ultrasound probe to take better-quality images of your heart. TEE takes more detailed pictures of your heart and the aorta and is used when the doctors need more detail than a standard echocardiogram can give them.

Psychiatrists

• Mental Health
  Hamilton Cardiology Associates is committed to ensuring the rights of our patients to privacy. This Notice of Privacy Practices describes how we may use and disclose your protected health information (PHI) to carry out treatment, payment or health care operations and for other purposes that are permitted or required by law. It also describes your rights to access and control your PHI. PHI includes all information concerning your physical or mental health, the healthcare treatment you receive and the payment for your healthcare treatment. PHI includes all individually identifiable health information including your identity, address, age, social security number, the reason you are being seen, the treatments and medications you receive, and your entire medical history. Hamilton Cardiology Associates will take the necessary steps to ensure that business associates receiving your PHI, such as billing companies also adhere to the privacy standards of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Hamilton Cardiology Associates is required to provide you with notice of our legal duties and privacy practices with respect to PHI and to abide by the terms of this Notice of Privacy Practices. We may change the terms of our Notice of Privacy Practices at any time. Any new Notice of Privacy Practices will be effective for all PHI that we maintain at that time. We will provide you with a copy of the revised Notice of Privacy Practices sending a copy to you in the mail upon request or providing one to you at your next appointment.

Endocrinologist

• Diabetes Care

Radiologist

• Ultrasound
  An exercise stress echocardiogram (Stress ECHO) is designed to assess how your heart, lungs and blood vessels respond to increasing workload (exercise). The purpose of this test is to compare the ultrasound images of your heart before and after it is stressed. It can help provide information about the level to which you can exercise if there are any problems affecting your ability to exercise, and how your condition changes with exercise. The echocardiogram images help your cardiologist determine whether there are any major blockages in your arteries.  They can also see if there has been damage to the heart muscle after a heart attack.  It will also help them determine the best type of treatment you may need to correct any abnormal finding.
• MRI
  Magnetic Resonance imaging (MRI) uses a powerful magnet to produce images of internal organs and functions. Metal objects are attracted to the magnet and are normally not allowed near MRI machines. The magnet can interrupt the pacing and inhibit the output of pacemakers. If MRI must be done, the pacemaker output in some models can be reprogrammed. Discuss with your doctor the possible risks and benefits before you undergo MRI scanning. Newer pacemakers are now MRI compatible, but the MRI must be performed at a center that is certified in treating patients with pacemakers.
• X-Rays
• Nuclear Medicine
  A Nuclear Medicine Thallium Viability Scan is a test used to evaluate the blood flow to the heart. After a heart attack (myocardial infarction), some of the heart muscle may be permanently damaged or scarred. Once this occurs, the area affected will cease to function properly. Other parts of the heart may be injured, but not permanently scarred. These areas may be “hibernating”, and may not be detectable through traditional imaging studies, such as an echocardiogram. These damaged areas of the heart may still be alive or “viable”, but may not have completely recovered. As a result, the heart may temporarily function at a much-reduced level. Your doctor may want to identify these “hibernating” areas because restoring blood flow to that area of the heart may restore proper function and prevent permanent damage from occurring.
• Computed Tomography
  Because the injected medications contain only a minimal amount of the carrier drug, there are no significant side effects. The radioactive tracer used during the Tc99m PYP/HDP scan is a diagnostic dose of radiation that is similar to the dose you would receive during a CT scan.
• Chemotherapy
  During chemotherapy for cancer, to monitor the ventricles’ pumping strength (some cancer drugs can be harmful to the heart muscle)

Dermatologists

• Lesions
  TEE is often used to provide information during surgery to repair heart valves, a tear in the aorta or congenital heart lesions. It’s also used during surgical treatment for endocarditis, a bacterial infection of the inner lining of the heart and valves.