Office Hours

Dr. Livstone performs elective endoscopic procedures on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings. Dr. Livstone is in the office Monday afternoon, Tuesday, Wednesday afternoon, and Thursday. Emergency procedures are performed Monday through Friday after office hours, and on any weekend day that he is on call. We usually try to schedule elective procedures during the morning hours to minimize the duration of fasting a person must undergo on the day of an endoscopic procedure.

At least one member of the office staff is present Monday through Friday in the office after 8 AM to receive mail and packages. Due to the tremendous number of administrative activities required for operating the modern medical office, we forward our phones to the telephone answering service from 8:00 AM to 8:30 AM Monday through Friday so the office staff may perform their daily office opening procedures and after 4:30 PM Monday through Thursday and after 2:30 PM on Friday, so the office staff may perform their daily closeout procedures. We also forward the phones to the telephone answering service Monday through Friday between 12 Noon - 1 PM so that the office employees may have a Fair Labor Practices lunch hour. The telephone answering service will hold all non-emergent calls during the mid-day lunch hour until the office reopens at 1 PM.

After Hours Emergency Coverage:

Dr. Livstone shares after hours evening and weekend call coverage with four other board-certified gastroenterologists. One of these doctors is available by phone (and if necessary to see you at one of the area hospitals) every weekday evening from 4:30 PM until 8:00 AM the following morning; one of these doctors is also available by phone all weekend. If you are having a true gastrointestinal emergency or a serious problem, call the main office line 955-0000; and the telephone answering service will page the doctor on call. Since the doctor on call is covering 5 medical practices on evenings and weekends, it is important that you telephone this office during regular office hours for prescription refills, billing questions, and non-emergency questions or routine medical matters. As a general policy, doctors in this coverage group will not refill prescriptions for narcotics or other controlled substances for patients of the other doctors that they do not know on evenings and weekends; instead, the on-call doctor will advise you to call your doctor's office during regular office hours. If for any reason you believe that your situation is too urgent to wait for a return call from the on-call physician, proceed immediately to one of the area hospital emergency rooms. There, you will be evaluated by the emergency room physicians who will consult the appropriate doctors to see you.

Holiday Office Closings:

The office is closed New Year's Day, the afternoon of Good Friday, Memorial Day Observed, July 4, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, the Friday after Thanksgiving, the afternoon of December 24, and Christmas Day. There will be a doctor from the coverage group on call for medical emergencies on each of these holidays.