Welcome to Giving Tree

I am writing to you all now that our transition here at McKenzie Pediatrics is official with Dr. McKenzie now fully retired and I have taken on the role of practice owner. First and foremost, I want to assure everyone that my goal is to make this transition as seamless as possible. We plan to continue to run the practice in the manner it has always been run – easy access to appointments and advice, weekend visits, newborn home visits and quality care. We also hope to update some things to make our office even more exceptional as our transition occurs.

First and foremost, myself and Dr. Piekarski remain at the office as always and we will happily take on any of Dr. McKenzie's patients. We are, however, very excited to announce that we will have a new member on our team starting July 5th. Dr. Anna Brownstein will be joining us and initially will work 3 days per week and share weekend coverage with the 2 of us. Dr. Brownstein has been practicing in South Carolina for the last 2 years and is moving to Massachusetts with her husband and 3 young children. Once she and her family have settled in, Dr. Brownstein will also become full time (4 days per week). She is also ready and happy to accept any of Dr. McKenzie's patients.

I also would like introduce Joe Berger who is both a nurse and our new practice manager. Those of you with our practice for long enough, might remember Joe, as he was triage nurse in our practice previously. In the interim, he was working as a nurse manager in a large pediatric practice, but has, to our delight, decided to rejoin us here in this new role.

I also would like to remind everyone that we typically do have office hours on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays. The phones will be live on weekends between 9am-9:30am and we are usually in the office until about 12pm (sometimes a little shorter or longer depending on how busy it is). We will continue to have occasional coverage with on weekends with Wayland Pediatrics and we do value their help in ensuring we have all weekends and holidays covered.

We continue to have availability for COVID PCR testing from our office – depending on the situation and supplies, we have both in office rapid PCR testing and send out PCR testing with usual turnaround time of 24 hours.

We hope as COVID begins to turn from pandemic to endemic, and our youngest patients can be vaccinated, that we will be able to welcome you back to our waiting room in the future. For those with children under 5 years old, keep an eye out for more messages from us regarding COVID vaccine clinics in the upcoming weeks.

Lastly, I do hope that all of our families continue to feel at home here at their pediatrics office – we certainly will continue to strive to meet and exceed expectations for quality medical care, and we do feel we offer something just a little bit different and unique here. We will, with some time, be transitioning our practice name to Giving Tree Pediatrics; a name I hope can be carried on long after my time here is complete, but also reminiscent of the fact that our job here is provide our patients with what they need to grow and develop healthily and happily.