I am pleased to be able to resume offering you a clean and disease-free office setting for your primary care! We have put in place a series of procedures and protocols that will keep all of you, and all of us, safe. But I am counting on you to make sure that all of our patients who have COVID-19 symptoms are seen via a Virtual Visit. If you have a fever, or any of the other known symptoms, we will be glad to see you virtually. We will consider arranging for the best available testing, help you manage your illness, and advise you on the need for quarantine.
For all other Primary Care, we are glad to see you either in our office, or continue over our Virtual Visit platform. There will be times when an in-office visit is better, such as for Routine Physical Exams, or when a lab collection is necessary, etc. But whenever possible, at least for the present time, we would love to keep the distance, and provide your care virtually. We may decide during a virtual visit to order lab tests or schedule you for an in-office visit to get a better look, and these can be arranged soon after the virtual visit. Our in office lab is not offering the nasopharyngeal PCR test for active COVID infection (that will be prescribed at a drive through testing center), but we are able to send your blood for COVID Antibody testing to see if you may have developed immunity.
When you do schedule a visit in our office, we will let you know more about the “distancing” procedures that we will be asking of you. We are scheduling our visits far enough apart that we hope that when paired with a check-in process that begins at your home, there will be no overlap of patients in the waiting room. Staff will be wearing appropriate personal protective equipment, and we ask that you wear a facemask covering your nose and mouth at all times. And of course, we will be sterilizing each room and all high touch areas after each patient is seen.
Reopening our Community
Society needs to get back to business and reopen, and we all need to put into place the proper measures to keep ourselves as safe as possible. We are now much more capable of handling this risk than we were at the end of January. We have learned how this disease is transmitted, and of the need for social distancing. And if you become sick with something that resembles COVID, I can help arrange for you to be tested at a drive thru testing center right away. If you all would immediately start recording the names and hopefully contact information for all of the people you become exposed to each day, we can trace and test those folks if you become sick. Unless we are medical researchers, these are likely the only things we can do to help stop this pandemic.
I hope to see you all soon!
Bill Condrell
