How to Get Your Child Into Riley Hospital in Indianapolis If You're New to the System
Referral rules, insurance coverage, satellite clinics, parking logistics, and what to expect before your first appointment — everything the hospital's website doesn't put in one place.
Referral rules, insurance coverage, satellite clinics, parking logistics, and what to expect before your first appointment — everything the hospital’s website doesn’t put in one place.
Getting a child into Riley Hospital for Children is one of those tasks that should be simple and often isn’t. The system involves two distinct but overlapping entities, referral rules that shift depending on your insurance plan, a main campus that genuinely confuses first-time visitors, and satellite clinics scattered across the metro that most new families don’t know exist. This guide walks through the process in the order you’d actually encounter it: from figuring out whether you need a referral to finding the right parking structure on a cold morning when you’re already running late.
What “Riley” Actually Means and Why the Two Names Matter
The first thing that trips up families new to Indianapolis: “Riley” refers to two related but structurally distinct things, and which one you need determines who you call and where you go.
Riley Hospital for Children at IU Health is the inpatient academic medical center at 705 Riley Hospital Drive on the IU Health medical campus near downtown. This is where surgeries happen, where children are admitted, where complex inpatient care takes place.
Riley Children’s Health is the outpatient clinic network — specialists, primary care pediatricians, and subspecialty clinics spread across Indianapolis and its suburbs. When a pediatrician in Fishers refers your child to a Riley cardiologist, that appointment is almost certainly at a Riley Children’s Health outpatient location, not at the main hospital building.
Both sit under the IU Health umbrella. The practical consequence: when people say “I need to get my kid to Riley,” they might mean the inpatient hospital, or they might mean an outpatient specialist. In most non-emergency cases, they mean a Riley Children’s Health clinic. Getting that wrong wastes time you don’t have.
To confirm the current scheduling number and online options, visit riley.iuhealth.org. Verify the number directly on the site before calling — contact information changes.
Step 1: Determine Whether You Need a Referral Before You Call
This is the question families ask most often. The honest answer: it depends on your insurance far more than it depends on Riley’s policy.
Riley Children’s Health doesn’t run a universal referral requirement across all its services. Whether you need a physician referral before scheduling a specialist depends largely on how your plan is structured.
HMO plans — including most Medicaid managed care plans — almost certainly require a PCP referral. Indiana’s Medicaid managed care organizations are HMO products. Your child’s primary care physician must generate a referral before a Riley specialist can see your child, or the visit won’t be covered. Skipping this and scheduling directly gets claims denied. It happens more often than it should.
PPO plans generally don’t require a referral. If your child is covered under a PPO through an employer or the ACA marketplace, you can often call Riley Children’s Health directly and schedule without going through a pediatrician first.
Some specialties run their own pathways regardless of insurance. Surgical subspecialties — cardiac surgery, neurosurgery, orthopedics — typically require a physician referral because they involve pre-authorization and documentation. Behavioral health and developmental pediatrics (evaluations for autism, ADHD, developmental delays) have a separate intake process: expect a screening questionnaire and a waitlist. Demand for these services in Indianapolis consistently outpaces capacity. Get on the waitlist the day you have the referral. Don’t wait for a better week. Oncology referrals move through a faster, urgency-triaged track.
The simplest move: call riley.iuhealth.org’s scheduling line and ask whether a referral is required for the specific service you need. Five minutes. Saves weeks.
Step 2: Find a Riley-Affiliated Pediatrician If You Don’t Have One Yet
If your child doesn’t have a primary care pediatrician in Indianapolis and needs one as an entry point to Riley, you have concrete options.
Riley operates its own pediatric primary care clinics across the metro. Establishing care at one means referrals to Riley specialists are generated by providers already in the same network on the same electronic records system. A referral that takes a week through an outside office can move in a day or two when everyone’s already on the same platform. The IU Health physician finder at iuhealth.org lets you filter by specialty, location, and whether a provider is actually accepting new patients. Use the filter. It’s real and it will save you from calling a dozen offices that are full.
Riley Children’s Health’s own find-a-doctor tool at riley.iuhealth.org is scoped to the Riley network specifically and worth checking separately.
Families on Medicaid or without insurance have two named safety-net options. HealthNet Community Health Centers operates multiple Indianapolis locations, accepts Medicaid including Hoosier Healthwise, and sees patients on a sliding-scale fee schedule. Call them directly to confirm current locations and referral arrangements with Riley. Eskenazi Health is Indianapolis’s major safety-net system — pediatric and family medicine clinics, Medicaid accepted, patients seen regardless of ability to pay, and established referral relationships with Riley. Confirm current Riley referral arrangements when you call.
Both systems serve significant portions of Indianapolis’s Burmese, Congolese, and Spanish-speaking communities and have language access services.
If you’re new to Indianapolis, in a new zip code, or simply don’t know where to start: call 211. Operators can identify Medicaid-accepting pediatric providers near your address and connect you with enrollment assistance if your child isn’t yet covered.
Step 3: Confirm Your Insurance Before You Schedule Anything
Indiana’s children’s Medicaid program is Hoosier Healthwise. It covers children and pregnant women. It is not HIP 2.0, which is Indiana’s Medicaid expansion for adults 19–64. A household can have a parent on HIP 2.0 and a child on Hoosier Healthwise at the same time — separate programs, separate managed care organizations, separate rules. This distinction catches families off guard constantly.
Hoosier Healthwise runs through managed care organizations including MDwise, Anthem, and CareSource. Before scheduling anything, confirm Riley Children’s Health is currently in-network for your child’s specific plan. Call the member services number on your child’s insurance card, or call Riley Children’s Health scheduling directly with your plan information. To confirm which MCO your child is enrolled with, check the member card or contact Indiana FSSA.
For uninsured and underinsured families: IU Health has a financial assistance and charity care program you can access before your child’s first appointment — not just after a bill arrives. Financial counselors are available through IU Health Patient Financial Services and can walk through eligibility in advance. Families without documentation are not turned away from care. Many families don’t know this. Call before the first appointment, explain your situation, and understand your options before incurring any charges. Find current contact information at iuhealth.org.
Step 4: Choose the Right Location — Main Campus or a Satellite Clinic
Here’s something genuinely useful that a lot of new families miss: many Riley Children’s Health specialist appointments don’t happen at the main downtown campus at all. Routine visits — pediatric cardiology follow-ups, endocrinology, certain orthopedic appointments, general surgery consultations — often take place at suburban clinic locations that are easier to reach and have straightforward parking.
Riley Children’s Health outpatient clinics operate in Fishers, Carmel, Westfield, the Lawrence/northeast Indianapolis area, and the Greenwood/Johnson County area. Check riley.iuhealth.org for the current full list and to confirm which specialties are at each site — not every subspecialty is offered everywhere. Complex multi-specialty cases, post-surgical follow-up requiring inpatient backup, and initial evaluations for serious diagnoses will typically go to the main campus. But if your child has a routine subspecialty referral, ask at scheduling whether a suburban location works. It often does, and the difference in your morning is real.
The main campus is at 705 Riley Hospital Drive on the IU Health/IUPUI medical campus on the near-west side of downtown. This is a large, interconnected academic medical campus — not a standalone building — and first-time visitors routinely underestimate its footprint. Know before you go exactly which building and entrance you’re heading to. They are not the same door.
Step 5: Navigate the Main Campus — Parking, Entrances, and Getting There Without a Car
Print this section and put it on the refrigerator if you have a downtown appointment coming up.
Parking. For Riley Hospital specifically, IU Health directs families to a designated parking structure accessible from Senate Avenue. Confirm the current structure name, exact entrance, and daily rates before your visit at iuhealth.org — parking information lives in the parking section of the site, and rates should be confirmed there rather than assumed.
Valet parking is available at the Riley Hospital main entrance. If you’re arriving with a child who uses a wheelchair, mobility equipment, or medical devices like oxygen or IV poles, valet is the practical call — navigating a parking structure with that equipment is its own ordeal. Confirm current valet pricing on arrival.
The main entrance on Riley Hospital Drive has accessible drop-off and designated accessible parking near the entrance.
Several buildings on the IU Health downtown campus connect via internal sky bridges, which matters when it’s 14 degrees or raining sideways. Verify current sky bridge access points with campus wayfinding when you arrive — ongoing construction has changed pedestrian routes, and older maps circulating on parent Facebook groups may be wrong. During winter weather, structures fill early. Budget extra time and consider valet if there’s ice on the ground.
Without a car. IndyGo’s Red Line BRT runs along College Avenue and connects through the IUPUI campus area. Check current stop locations and the walking path to Riley’s entrance at indygo.net or call 317-635-3344. Use the IndyGo trip planner to route from your neighborhood.
Rideshare drop-off at the main Riley Hospital entrance works well. For families using Uber or Lyft, this is often the cleanest option — drop off directly at the entrance, request your return ride from the same spot.
Step 6: What to Expect at Your First Appointment
Scheduling timelines are real. New patient waits in Riley Children’s Health specialty departments can stretch — longer for developmental pediatrics and behavioral health, where demand across the metro has consistently exceeded capacity for years. The moment you have a referral, call. Don’t wait for paperwork to feel complete.
Urgent referrals move differently. Suspected oncology, new-onset serious neurological symptoms, cardiac emergencies — these are triaged on urgency. If your child’s pediatrician has flagged a case as urgent, ask them to say so explicitly when sending the referral to Riley. Oncology has its own intake pathway and moves faster than standard new patient scheduling.
Interpreter services. Riley Children’s Health and Riley Hospital serve substantial Burmese, Congolese, and Spanish-speaking populations in Indianapolis. Professional interpreter services are available. Request one when you schedule — not when you arrive. This gives the team time to arrange the right interpreter, in-person or via video. Don’t rely on a family member to interpret during a medical appointment when professional interpretation is available and free to you. Worth saying plainly.
Before you walk in the door. First-time visitors to the main campus regularly walk into the wrong building. The Riley outpatient entrance and the inpatient hospital entrance are different doors. When you confirm your appointment, ask specifically which entrance and which floor. Write it down.
Bring: your child’s insurance card (not just your own), referral documentation if your insurance required one, relevant prior records (imaging, test results, records from other specialists), a current medication list with dosages, and photo ID. Riley’s system can pull electronic records from many providers, but a physical copy as backup has never hurt anyone.
For outpatient clinic appointments, arrive 15–20 minutes early for new patient paperwork. For main campus appointments, add buffer for parking and campus navigation. If your child ends up admitted or requires emergency-level evaluation, knowing when to go to urgent care or the ER for a serious concern in Indianapolis before you’re in that moment is useful preparation — and it’s part of our pediatric and family health coverage.
Key Contacts and Addresses
RILEY SCHEDULING & MAIN WEBSITE
riley.iuhealth.org
(Verify current scheduling phone number on the website
before calling — contact information changes)
RILEY CHILDREN'S HEALTH FIND A DOCTOR
riley.iuhealth.org/find-a-doctor
IU HEALTH PHYSICIAN FINDER (all IU Health providers)
iuhealth.org/find-a-doctor
IU HEALTH PATIENT FINANCIAL SERVICES
(charity care, financial assistance, uninsured options)
Find current contact number at iuhealth.org
RILEY HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN — MAIN CAMPUS
705 Riley Hospital Drive, Indianapolis, IN 46202
ESKENAZI HEALTH (safety-net, Medicaid accepted)
eskenazihealth.edu
HEALTHNET COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTERS
(Medicaid, sliding scale, multiple Indianapolis locations)
healthnetabc.org
INDIANA 211
Dial 2-1-1 (Medicaid providers, enrollment help,
neighborhood resources)
INDYGO TRIP PLANNER
indygo.net | 317-635-3344
IU HEALTH PARKING INFORMATION
iuhealth.org (parking section)The most common mistake families make is assuming they can’t call Riley directly until they have everything sorted. You can call before you have the referral, before you’ve confirmed the insurance, before you know which location you need. The scheduling line at riley.iuhealth.org exists for exactly that conversation. Start there.
