What Can I Do to Prevent Exposure to COVID-19 in My Practice?

Now that a number of medical practices are reopening, we have created a short video to highlight tips to help you prevent exposure to COVID-19 in your practice. In our video, our Marketing Assistant, Serena Velez, shares helpful tips and screening questions to ask your patients before allowing them to visit your office for care. The main goal of implementing and reinforcing these questions is to keep you, your staff, and other patients as healthy and safe as possible, and also minimize the transmission of the coronavirus to the community and society as a whole. 

We truly encourage you to stress to your patients that they absolutely MUST call ahead before visiting your practice. Screen every patient over the phone prior to any in-person visit by asking the following questions (CMS 3/9/2020):  

1. Do you have fever, cough, sore throat, or difficulty breathing? 
2. Have you had contact with someone that has been confirmed or is suspected of having COVID-19?
3. Do you live in a community with confirmed sustained community transmission of COVID-19? 
4. Have you traveled within the last 14 days to any location either domestically or internationally with confirmed sustained community transmission of COVID-19? (Refer to CDC Coronavirus Disease 2019 Information for Travel)  

In addition, to prevent exposure to COVID-19 in your practice we urge you to reinforce policies that you should already have in place requiring all staff to STAY HOME if they are sick, especially if they exhibit fever or symptoms of a respiratory infection, such as a cough, sore throat, or difficulty breathing (CDC 2/29/2020). We also highly suggest you consider offering and implementing telemedicine services for your patients in order to establish social distancing, while still providing your patients with the care they need and being able to secure future procedures and treatments (CDC 3/6/2020).