How Old Do You Have to Be to Get an IV Drip in Miami?
Eighteen and over. That is the line. If you are eighteen or older you book for yourself, no supervision and no extra steps. If you are under eighteen we generally do not run a drip, with one narrow exception: someone within a year or two of eighteen can sometimes be seen with a parent or guardian present, and only after our clinical team looks at the specific situation and agrees.
For young children the answer is a flat no, and this post exists mostly to say who to call instead, because the parents asking us this are usually asking at ten at night with a sick kid in the next room.
If your child is sick right now
Call your pediatrician, or their after hours line, which almost every pediatric practice in Miami has. If you cannot reach them and you are worried, a pediatric urgent care or an emergency room is the right call, and there are several in Miami Dade and Broward that see kids specifically. If a child is very young, or you are frightened by what you are seeing, skip straight to the emergency room. Nobody has ever regretted that.
I am not going to write a paragraph here about how to judge whether your kid is dehydrated. That is not my call to make from a blog post, and the people whose call it is are a phone number away.
Why eighteen
Two reasons, and neither of them is squeamishness.
The first is consent. An adult books an appointment, answers the intake questions, and consents to a procedure for themselves. A minor cannot do any of that, which changes what our nurse and our clinical team are responsible for and who they are responsible to. Some mobile companies market pediatric infusions anyway. We decided not to be one of them.
The second is that placing an IV in a child is a genuinely different skill from placing one in an adult. Smaller veins, a patient who does not want to hold still, and much less room for error on fluid volume. The people who are good at it do it every day in a pediatric setting with pediatric equipment and a pediatric clinician standing there. A living room is not where that should happen, and our nurses are excellent at what they actually do, which is adults.
That is the same reasoning behind the rest of how we screen. There is more on it on our clinical standards page.
The sixteen and seventeen year old question
This is the one that actually comes up, and it usually sounds like one of two calls. A high school athlete who cramped badly at a tournament and a parent who wants to do something about it. Or a teenager coming off a stomach bug who has not kept anything down all day.
Close to eighteen, we will look at it. What that means in practice: a parent or guardian calls, tells us what is going on, and our clinical team decides. If they say yes, the parent or guardian is there for the whole appointment, start to finish, no exceptions. If they say no, we say no and point you somewhere better.
It is a real maybe, not a polite no, but it is decided case by case and never at the door. Do not plan around it. If your teenager needs care tonight, call a clinician who sees minors.
Can a parent just sign for it
No, and this is worth explaining because it is the follow up question almost every time. A parent signing a form does not turn a pediatric appointment into an adult one. The nurse standing in your living room still has to place a line in a child, still has to judge how that child is doing during the infusion, and still has to act if something changes. A signature does not add any of that capability to the appointment. It only moves paperwork around.
So when we say the clinical team decides, that is a real review of the specific situation and not a formality we walk somebody through. It is also why the answer sometimes comes back no even when a parent is willing and the teenager is nearly eighteen.
What we can do for the rest of the house
The most common version of this call is a parent who has been up for two nights with a sick kid and is now running on nothing themselves. That we can absolutely help with, and we do it constantly.
The saline hydration drip at $199, the immune boost at $249, and the hangover drip at $249, which is really just a fast recovery bag with nausea medication in it, are the three that get booked most in this situation. The rest of the menu, up to the Glowing Skin IV at $349 and the specialty infusions, is on the full drip menu. If you are short on time or just do not want a full appointment, the vitamin shots take a few minutes.
We can also run two adults on one appointment, which is what most couples end up doing. One nurse, one trip, both of you. You can book an appointment here or call or text 305-998-0047.
The short version
Eighteen and over, book normally, nothing extra required.
Roughly sixteen to seventeen, possible in some situations, decided by our clinical team beforehand, parent or guardian present throughout.
Younger than that, we are not the right service, and your pediatrician or a pediatric urgent care is.
The adults in the household, any time, same day when we have the slot.
If you are not sure which side of that line your situation falls on, just call or text 305-998-0047 and ask. We will tell you straight, including when the answer is that you want somebody other than us. And if you are the parent in this story and you keep ending up as the one who never gets taken care of, the membership covers your whole household at half price, which is how most of our families end up using it.
